The Weekly Bout

Many cities, small towns and village clusters organize weekly dangals, the most basic example of tournament organization. Although they are not particularly elaborate, they capture the essence of all dangals small and large. I am most familiar with the weekly Sunday afternoon dangal held in Dehra Dun. The pattern is almost identical from one week to the next.

Walking along one of the many roads that lead from the area of the central clock tower towards the old cantonment parade ground on a Sunday afternoon, one is likely to hear the rhythmic beat of the dhol (double-sided drum) which announces the beginning of every dangal.

Earlier in the day, before anyone arrives, a hired laborer digs the tournament pit. It is inevitably hard-packed from a week of disuse, trampled under the feet of young neighborhood boys who play cricket nearby, and littered with the trash that all public grounds seem to attract.

Gradually, at about four in the afternoon, a crowd of people gathers around. Those who come early sit on the grass about fifteen meters from the edge of the pit. The dhol player walks around counterclockwise calling others to take their places. The mass of seated spectators expands to enclose the pit on all four sides. It then thickens to about ten people deep. A second band of standing spectators circles the seated group and expands outward as the dangal proceeds. Bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, and the odd truck park on the outer edges of the gathered crowd. From the time that the first bout is fought until the final contest the crowd builds from five hundred to over a thousand.

For the most part, working-class men and boys—rickshaw pullers, day laborers, semiskilled factory workers, railway porters, and vegetable hawkers—attend weekly bouts. Wrestling is also very popular among mechanics, truck drivers, and other such skilled professionals who have a self-image of physical prowess. A fair percentage of the spectators at a dangal own small businesses or work as clerks in the vast municipal bureaucracies, public offices, and district courts.

As the seated crowd expands around the pit and the drummer continues to beat the dhol, Sharma, one of the dangal organizers, enters the arena and begins to bless the pit. He lights a stick of incense on one side of the pit and, after circling it around a few times, plants it in the earth. While circumambulating the pit he takes handfuls of marigolds from his satchel and throws them onto the earth. His actions are perfunctory and distracted. While Sharma blesses and circles the pit, Bholu, a vegetable hawker who referees the bouts, enters the arena and breaks apart the larger clods of earth that the laborer has left in his haste. Both Sharma and Bholu stop occasionally to talk with friends, answer questions, and exchange jokes and jibes. The atmosphere is casual.

The contestants tend to arrive later than the spectators in order to make dramatic, staged entrances. Contestants usually arrive in groups. In Dehra Dun there are two main factions. One is lead by Yamin, a fairly well-to-do entrepreneur, and the other by “Lal Bal Wale” (the red-haired one) who promotes most of the wrestlers who are not in Yamin’s clique. Both Yamin and “Lal Bal Wale” are Muslims, though the wrestlers in their respective cliques are Hindu and Sikh as well as Muslim. A clique, in the sense used here, is an ad hoc alliance of friends, co-workers, and neighbors who come to the dangal together and support the same wrestlers. A wrestler does not have to be allied with any clique, but alliance does tend to enhance personal prestige.

Yamin’s clique is comprised of Muslim motorcycle mechanics, butchers, and fishmongers. The clique has supported numerous wrestlers over the years. During the summer of 1987 the focus of the group was exclusively on two Muslim wrestlers from Saharanpur, a district town to the southwest of Dehra Dun. The two wrestlers came by bus every Sunday and met Yamin and the rest of the group at a teashop near the motorcycle garages. As a group the clique would drive or walk to the parade ground. Along the way others who identified with Yamin would join the entourage. Led by Yamin, the clique would clear a path through the standing crowd and then purposefully make its way through the seated audience and unabashedly clear an area for themselves in the very front. Yamin would then sit down with the two wrestlers next to him and a clique of fifteen or so friends on either side.

The entrance of a clique into the arena is, to say the least, designed to draw attention to itself. As a body the clique comports itself with casual conceit and confident lack of interest. There is a definite quality of majestic pomp as the members of each clique (and to a lesser but still significant sense all members of the audience) affect an attitude of cocksure pride and self-confidence. There is something in the dangal that brings out the prince in everyone. Timing is a large part of this drama, and if a dangal is scheduled to start at, say, 4:30, a wrestler with any sort of reputation will not make an entrance before 5:00.

The cliques and individual wrestlers make their entrances with various degrees of drama. Yamin’s clique is on par with that of “Lal Bal Wale,” but there are others: three army wrestlers who form a small though highly regarded clique, a railway clique headed up by Kanta Pahalwan, and, occasionally, a small group of wrestlers from either Haridwar or Roorkee. There are also a number of regular “independent” wrestlers: Chiranji from Rampur, a local wrestler who is recognized because he has only one hand, and a few others from nearby towns and villages. Every so often a wrestler from as far away as Muzzafarnagar (150 km), Simla (200 km) or Chandigarh (125 km) will attend.

After he has blessed the pit, Sharma, a toothless seventy-year-old retired municipal-board clerk, calls on young wrestlers to come into the arena and accept challenges. Usually this appeal has no effect, and Sharma berates the crowd for wasting his and everyone else’s time. This usually has about as much effect as the initial appeal which prompts Sharma to give one of his long—though always tongue-in-cheek—lectures on respect and the lack thereof: the spinelessness of modern youth, the need for self-respect, and the value and moral duty of public service. Sharma has been doing this for so long that even if it was once meant seriously, it is now a burlesque self-parody with the tone of slapstick overstatement. The crowd loves it and shouts back retorts only just disguised in enough respect for Sharma’s age and status to prevent a real confrontation. While Sharma, acting the part of one mortally insulted, pretends to cancel the dangal for lack of interest, Bholu, a past-his-prime wrestler turned referee, enters the pit and starts exercising vigorously. The crowd’s attention turns to Bholu as he parodies a self-important wrestler showing off his strength and physique while slapping his thighs, beating his chest, preening, and promenading around the pit. Sharma rises to the occasion and points out that Bholu, a father of eight and purveyor of potatoes, is the picture of health and youth. Sharma and Bholu’s performance is a studied comic routine that belies the underlying seriousness of the dangal specifically, and, indeed, of wrestling in general.

While Bholu and Sharma are in charge of running the dangal, they represent a larger group of people who are responsible for the overall organization of the event. This group is known as the dangal panchayat and comprises three or four men in addition to Sharma and Bholu. In contrast to the comic aspect of Sharma and Bholu’s role, the pradhan (boss/chief) of the dangal panchayat is a dignified and affectedly elite figure. He often wears the uniform of post-Gandhian Indian politics: khadi churidar payjamas, black leather “country-style” shoes, and a white “Nehru” cap. The pradhan and two other members of the panchayat always carry briefcases, a clear mark of their status in an otherwise primarily proletarian arena.

The panchayat is responsible for getting permission from the municipal board for the use of the parade ground, and from the police for holding a public dangal. The panchayat must also pay the dhol player and the man who digs the pit. Beyond this, however, there is little organization or management required. The pradhan does not take an active part in running the dangal. He walks around the pit but rarely gets involved in arranging or deciding the outcome of a bout. As such, he stands as a benevolent symbol of beneficence: an authority without responsibility.

One of the points that wrestlers make is that dangals are the essence of what may be called a minimalist philosophy. In modern India, as elsewhere, people are pressured to acquire things in order to be regarded as successful and happy. The dangal, I was told, is directed against this kind of modern materialist mentality. All that one needs is open space, a person to referee, a drummer, and a crowd. Laughing, one man pointed out that unlike cricketers or hockey players a wrestler hardly needs more than his underwear (i.e., langot) in order to engage in a tournament. Any patch of earth is a potential arena. From this elemental base the dangal follows its own momentum. It can be staged—and many dangals are—but popular opinion has it that the dangal is a creature of its own volition, an event that emerges through the happenstance encounter of uncommon men in an ultramundane environment. In this formulation quality entertainment is not a factor of embellished pomp—colorful canopies, taped music, posters, and comfortable seats—but rather a function of the skill of particular wrestlers. The Dehra Dun dangal is not an elaborate event, but it is often both entertaining and meaningful because of its stark contrast to the complexity of the larger materialist world.

A dangal always begins with the youngest wrestlers coming out to the pit to extend or accept a challenge. Often a pair of eight- or ten-year-olds will be the first to fight. Although audiences tend to watch these bouts with desultory interest, many point out that these junior wrestlers must be encouraged if there is to be any wrestling in the future. Once the first two boys have wrestled, there is usually a surge of interest among others of a similar age who quickly take to the pit and try to match themselves with someone of equal age and stature.

Sharma and Bholu move these junior bouts along as quickly as possible. Sometimes more than one bout is fought at a time, and for pre-teenage wrestlers the time limit is never more than three minutes per bout.

While the junior contestants are wrestling, young teenage wrestlers come out to the pit. In Dehra Dun, in 1987, there were not many wrestlers of this age group. At other weekly dangals, however, there are usually numerous thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds eager to challenge someone and quick to accept any challenge offered. In any case, a wrestler only really begins to gain a reputation after adolescence, and becomes well known and accomplished when he is seventeen or eighteen. It is these and the more senior wrestlers whom the spectators have come to see. All else is preamble.

After the young teenage wrestlers have fought a few bouts, Sharma and Bholu gesture to Yamin and “Lal Bal Wale” to send out their best wrestlers. Inevitably Sharma’s first appeal is ignored. More often than not his more adamant second and third appeals are no more effective. Bholu is sent over to have a word with the two groups. Only when Yamin decides and gestures toward the pit with a casual though pointed shift of his eyes and head do his wrestlers take to the arena.

As with the entrance of the clique into the dangal, the entrance of a wrestler into the arena is a matter of dramatic timing and staged self-presentation. An account from the Times of March 2, 1928, captures the essence of this performance:

In most places each wrestler breathes a silent prayer, then touches the sand three times and lifts some of it to his brow, after which he leaps up and down in the open, slapping his thighs with resounding smacks. . . . The experts go through an immense amount of preliminaries, even after the formal shaking of hands. They do a press-up to improve their own muscles, and a squat or two to relax their legs, and smack their biceps before facing each other in a crouching position (Hornblower 1928: 65).

Only when the top-ranking wrestlers have taken to the arena does the dangal “heat up,” as one man put it. The heat is a function of the drama associated with a high rank contest. To illustrate the point we may take up the events of Sunday, September 21, 1987.

As the contest between two young wrestlers ended, Yamin leaned over to the two wrestlers from Saharanpur and indicated that it was time for them to “take a salami of the pit”—to go out and put forward a challenge. The two wrestlers stood up slowly. To the loud applause of the crowd and the resounding rhythm of the dhol they loped out into the arena and jogged across to the near corner of the pit. To perform a dand thonk, both leaned over, touched the earth with their right hands and then stood up straight while gently slapping the biceps of their crooked right arms with the flats of their left hands. Faces expressionless, they stood next to each other on one side of the pit.

Seeing this, and feeling the crowd’s energy surge forward with the wrestlers’, one had the impression that the dangal had been building to this climax all along, a crescendo anticipated by the very first beat of the dhol’s rhythm.

As the two wrestlers took to the arena, Sharma and Bholu began admonishing the crowd with renewed vigor, saying such things as, “Here are two fine wrestlers, who will challenge them? There must be someone from Dehra Dun who is up to this.” Finally, and with studied casualness, Kaliya, the top wrestler of the “Lal Bal Wale” clique, sauntered out into the arena. His entry brought another loud round of applause from the crowd. Kaliya saluted the earth and stood on the opposite side of the pit.

As Kaliya came into the arena, Yamin’s clique huddled together in conference as the two Saharanpur wrestlers stood and looked on. Finally, Kilo, a well-to-do butcher and vocal member of Yamin’s clique, stood up and indicated that the younger of the two Saharanpur wrestlers should extend his hand to Kaliya in challenge. After a short period of confusion wherein the two Saharanpur wrestlers tried to figure out which one of them should extend the challenge, the younger one, Said, again reached down and touched the earth. Slapping the inside of his right thigh with the flat of his right hand, he leaped into the pit and ran across to face Kaliya.

Without breaking stride Said reached down and, grabbing up a handful of earth, extended his hand to Kaliya. Kaliya reacted by not reacting. As the earth ran through the fingers of Said’s extended hand, punctuating, as it were, the pregnant moment of confrontation, Kaliya stood, as before, with his hands behind his back looking down at a clump of grass between his toes.

The crowd, which had to this point showed its mild enthusiasm through loud applause, all but exploded with one loud voice as Said leaped across the pit to challenge Kaliya. As he stood, hand extended, the crowd shouted out that Kaliya should take the challenge. Kaliya, however, looked over towards his clique, and reading there some sign, simply shook his head and began walking around the pit slowly. Said looked over to Yamin’s camp, shrugged, and, somewhat flustered, stepped out of the pit. Kilo dashed out into the arena and started talking with Sharma and Bholu to try to do something to persuade Kaliya to take the challenge. They all tried to get Kaliya to fight, but to no avail. Frustrated, Kilo returned to Yamin’s camp. The three wrestlers in the arena, now joined by four others, walked casually and with studied indifference around the pit.

Sharma and Bholu went over to the “Lal Bal Wale” camp and, judging from their gestures and the tone of their voices, told him in no uncertain terms that the match between the two wrestlers was fair and should proceed. Frustrated by a lack of immediate response from “Lal Bal Wale”—who, like any good clique leader, would not taint his poise by bowing to pressure—Sharma came over to Yamin’s camp along with the pradhan of the dangal to argue that it was getting late and that if a contest was to be held it had better be soon.

As Sharma walked away in close conference with the pradhan, Kilo stood up and announced in a loud, dramatic voice that a “purse” would be collected to place as a prize for the winner of the bout. With great flourish and public demonstration Kilo collected 5 rupees from almost everyone in Yamin’s clique and handed the 50-rupee purse to Bholu. Bholu danced out into the arena as the crowd shouted its approval. Holding the money over Said’s head, he announced that anyone who could beat this young man stood to win the whole purse. Still standing with studied distraction, Said basked in the glory of the crowd’s unchecked emotion, which seemed to counterpoise his own control.

Kaliya, who had returned to his camp while negotiations were going on, now came out to the pit again. After some hesitation, and loud encouragement from the crowd, Kaliya walked across the pit and shook hands with the young Saharanpur wrestler. Again the crowd shouted its approval as the dhol kept pace with the growing excitement.

Among Yamin’s clique there was a feeling of self-satisfaction tinged with a hint of cynical mirth. As those sitting around me put it, greed had proved the strongest arm in the dramatic pre-bout negotiations. Money, they said, breaks down many barriers.

After shaking hands both wrestlers retired to their respective camps: Kaliya with his characteristic casualness and understated style of self-presentation, and Said with sudden leaps and bounds of hardly restrained excitement. With great flourish, Said unwound his langot from around his waist as Kaliya, on the opposite side of the arena, carefully took off his pants and shirt and folded them in a neat pile. As both wrestlers began to undress, those in Yamin’s clique made a quick inspection of Said’s new janghiya (briefs). Comments were made about the strength of the material, its color and pattern—purple with yellow flowers—and the fit and quality of the stitching. The leg holes were checked for flexibility and comfort while the thin ropes sewn for strength into the hems were twisted straight and smooth. The janghiya were passed from hand to hand as each member of the clique demonstrated his knowledge of such things as the texture of the cloth, the quality of the workmanship, the aesthetic of design, and the importance of fit.

Both wrestlers tied on their wrestling langots, smoothed the cloth and tested the knots around their waists before squatting down to insure a comfortable fit. Before putting on his janghiya, Said jogged up and down in front of Yamin’s clique while limbering up his back, neck, and legs. Taking the janghiya and holding them by the waistband he lifted them three times to his forehead in a gesture of supplication, respect, and luck. After a few minutes Kilo helped Said into his briefs, which, in accordance with notions of correct fit, must be so tight that often more than one person must push, pull, and crimp them into place. Said shook hands with everyone in the clique and again loped into the arena and jogged slowly around the pit to keep himself warm while waiting for Kaliya to make himself ready.

Said was accompanied into the pit by Salim, the other wrestler from Saharanpur. As he stood by to offer encouragement, a local wrestler dashed across the arena and into the pit, picked up a handful of earth, and proffered it in challenge to the unsuspecting and unprepared Salim. Caught off guard, Salim backed away and refused to take the challenge. The challenger proclaimed in a loud voice that since Salim had entered the arena it was his right to extend a challenge and to have his challenge accepted. Recovering a degree of composure but losing an equal portion of patience, Salim walked to the center of the pit and announced that he had a cold and a bruised foot and would therefore subject himself to a bout only for a prize of 200 rupees. The challenger followed Salim around the pit with his hand extended and refused to listen to any excuses. This only prompted Salim to refuse more forcefully. Kilo ran into the pit and grabbed hold of Salim’s sleeve and pulled him back to Yamin’s camp as the crowd jeered loudly.

Having made himself ready, Kaliya sauntered into the pit and Sharma called both wrestlers to the center. Standing between them he grabbed their wrists, and holding up each wrestler’s arm, in turn announced their names and hometowns. Both wrestlers introduced, Sharma indicated that the bout was set for eight minutes. He released their wrists and stepped quickly back as the dhol player, silenced only briefly for the announcements, again set to beating his drum.

Both Kaliya and Said reached down and rubbed their hands in the earth. Having already broken a sweat, Kaliya submitted to being rubbed down and dried with earth. The wrestlers faced each other, locked hands, and the contest began as Sharma, Bholu, the pradhan, Kilo, and the drummer all walked around the pit.

In striking contrast to the pre-bout vocal enthusiasm of the crowd, once a contest has begun everyone becomes quiet and attentive. This is less a natural reaction than an issue of decorum. Silence serves to focus attention on the wrestlers, and the quality of a bout is said to be reflected in the degree to which skill and strength can leave one quite literally speechless. Periods of silence are counterpoised with eruptions of vocal empathy. But silence is the mark of true appreciation.

As everyone agreed, the fight itself was lackluster. Neither wrestler had even succeeded in knocking the other down, and so, after eight minutes, Sharma declared it a draw. In spite of the anticlimax, Kilo dashed out into the arena and lifted Said onto his shoulder to carry him partway back to his clique in a gesture of recognition and accomplishment. After retiring to their respective camps both wrestlers, accompanied by a member of their clique, walked around the arena to accept money prizes offered by people in the audience. Kilo, who accompanied Said on his “round,” admonished the crowd to show their appreciation by making a generous contribution. A number of people in the audience offered one or two rupees, and when Kilo and Said had completed their circuit they had collected about 100 rupees in all. This money was carefully counted and sorted into bills of like denomination. After the drummer was given two rupees (he collected that much, or a little less, from every wrestler), the rest was wrapped in a scarf and given to Yamin for safekeeping. This money was later given back to Said.

Sharma and Bholu then called on other wrestlers to compete. Soon two other bouts were arranged. However, these bouts were equally anticlimactic in both design and execution. The wrestlers were not affiliated with either of the two main cliques and were inexperienced and unskilled. During these bouts, Sharma and one of the other organizers walked through the crowd asking for contributions to ensure the dangal’s regular continuance. Many people were persuaded to give up their spare change.

As the last two wrestlers fought, the crowd’s interest faded with the light. Finally the smaller of the two managed to flip the other on his back. Bholu, distracted momentarily, failed to see this and Kilo dashed out shouting that the bout was over. This resulted in a degree of confusion as Bholu and the other organizers tried to figure out what had happened. The crowd, however, took this as a signal that the dangal was over and they left the parade ground en masse.

The panchayat gathered informally on the steps of a nearby building and discussed the day’s dangal. Those who had wrestled and felt they were entitled to some prize money approached Sharma to ask for their winnings. The money that had been collected for the main bout between Kaliya and Said was distributed equally between them both.