Conclusion

In this chapter I have sought to interpret some of the dominant symbols in the culture of wrestling in order to understand why wrestlers regard Nag Panchami as an important festival. My argument is that Nag Panchami symbolizes contained sexuality, either as the seed turned in on itself wherein the symbiotic energies of milk and semen merge, or as erotic snake passion cooled by milk. In either case non-sexual virility is the dominant motif in a wrestler’s life. On Nag Panchami when wrestlers mix buttermilk into the akhara earth, when they play “in their mother’s lap,” and when they show off their nurtured bodies, they are, in essence, dramatizing the efficacy of celibacy. In their own terms they are enacting what it means to feed milk to snakes.