Hero

You must be curious about our world. I can understand that. You have probably heard all kinds of things: that we suffer savage beatings for the slightest of reasons; that we are secretive and follow our guru like fanatics; that at night there is dark mischief amongst the boys. In your place I would probably be curious too. But the truth is much more ordinary. We live here like any group of young men that has to follow a certain set of rules. We train, we pray, we spar, we dream. Is it really so different from anywhere else?

There is a strict system for our daily life: the cooking, the sweeping, the washing. This morning Vikaas and I had to prepare the pit where we fight. We took it in turns, turning over the soil, lifting it out of the earth’s lap and then laying it back down. Vikaas steadied my arm as I dripped ghee over the mounds.

“Not that much. It’s more than four hundred rupees a kilo now,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“And you’re supposed to say the mantra at the same time. Not later, when you feel like it.”

He continued to watch me so I put the pot down: he could do it himself. I picked up the incense burner and trailed the curls of scent over the furrows of the pit, cupping the smoke with my hand, burying it in the ground.

Vikaas opened his mouth as if to point out something else that I was doing wrong but I turned my back to him.

Guruji likes things to be perfect but he does not bother to nitpick about the incense and the oil and the ghee. He is concerned with the important matters: our dedication to our practice, our faith in the life we have chosen, and our humility before God. He is serious and demanding but then what kind of a guru would he be otherwise? For more than a decade he was the most celebrated wrestler in these parts, and his father and grandfather before him. But at our akhara you will not see photos of their glory days on the walls.

“We must revere those who came before us but we must not lean on them. You are the future. I want to see your photos on these walls,” guruji says.

I had been at the akhara for nearly two years when Ranjeet arrived. Even in his checked shirt you could see the kind of fighter he was made to be, the power and muscle marking time under his skin. It was hot that day. His lips were slightly parted and he blew softly into the air. It looked as if it was that gentle sigh that brought him to life, his own breath making a marble figure into a man.

He had a detachment about him that none of us had ever seen in a new student. He threw his bag down on the ground as if he never gave much thought to where he slept or where he woke up. Even when he touched guruji’s feet, he did it with a sense of equality.

None of us could stop looking at him. Guruji introduced him to us as the son of his sister, news that was unsettling because we wondered whether he would get special treatment in spite of guruji’s reputation for fairness. In the akhara, you have to know your place in relation to every other person there. A boy’s native place, family position and jaath; his ability in the pit and the number of times he has won at a dangal; his generosity, his weakness, his tact; you have to find out all these things without asking and then work them into the hours of practice, prayer and chores.

A few of the boys stepped forward to tell Ranjeet their names and he half smiled and nodded but his expression said that their names were no concern of his. He shook hands with only two boys, appearing to pick at random. Dharam was one of them.

He glanced at Dharam’s...