Sunday 16 June 2019

‘We worship the body’: India's kushti mud wrestlers – a photo essay

Caste and religion are left at the door of India’s traditional wrestling academies, where the pursuit of physical grace and brute force is a pathway out of poverty

By day Amol Patil, 23, is a security guard, standing in a sentry box outside a company office in Mumbai, his limbs coiled inside a polyester uniform. By evening, when he enters the hallowed square of the clay pit, he is released in a blaze of brute force.

Patil is a wrestler of the traditional Indian school of mud-clay wrestling called kushti which dates back to the Mughals and is passed down from generation to generation. Kushti is practiced in an akhara, or wrestling academy, where everything is governed by strict rules in an atmosphere of austerity.

Continue reading...

from World news | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ZoqiPw

No comments:

Post a Comment

Post-Brexit border scheme to simplify trade put on pause again

Single Trade Window designed to reduce friction on imports and exports will be halted until at least 2026 amid cost fears A key part of the...