The next time, naturally very soon, you see Sushil Kumar, look away from his medal and see his ears. Like a tree has rings on its trunk to tell of the seasons it’s been through, an Indian wrestler’s ears tell of the grips he has extracted himself from to make the long journey from the sandpit to the more genteel paces of an international mat.

For all the bulk they carry, with their diet of ghee and milk, wrestlers need to be extremely flexible. And Kumar’s ears document the number of times he was grabbed, only to slip away and fight another match.

Biologists call it “pinna”, the upper flap of the ear. On Kumar’s proud person, the ears find likeness to the surface of the Water Cube. They have been flattened. Opponents have grabbed them to pull him down. Today, they frame a beaming face in the late-afternoon Beijing drizzle, as Kumar tells you of the proud but somewhat sidelined tradition he comes from, the tradition that has made him, even in this season of individual accomplishments, India’s sixth holder of an individual medal.

India’s presence at Olympic wrestling is mediated through the akhadas. When its practitioners explain to you where their journey began, as Kumar and his coaches do today, the story goes back to boyhood apprenticeships under pehelwans, the story sits upon the application of generations before them at the sandpit.

Wrestling in his blood

Kumar, from Baprola village in Delhi’s Najafgarh, says you have to understand how rooted wrestling is in the fabric of urban India. So when you again ask him how it is that he came to wrestling, all he can do is repeat, parents “ko shaukh tha ki pehelwani karoon”, they were keen that I become a wrestler. His father had been a wrestler, his older brother is one.

... contd.