The Wrestling Sisters

Women were not allowed to enter the dangal, until six girls from Haryana decided to break in. The story of how they pushed the boundaries of tradition.

- Rudra Neil Sengupta

THE DISTINCTION OF BEING INDIA’S FIRST WOMAN wrestler to qualify for the Olympics belongs to Geeta Phogat, who competed at the 2012 London Games ... Geeta belongs to what is perhaps wrestling’s most remarkable family. Her father, Mahavir Singh Phogat, came to Delhi from the village of Balali in Haryana to train under Chandgi Ram* when he was just 16 …

Balali is deep country. It is still untouched by Haryana’s hurried pace of urbanization, and sits hidden in the middle of wheat fields and guava and citrus groves. In the afternoon, you can walk around Balali’s slim tracery of cobbled streets and meet not a single person.

Inside Mahavir’s house—an elongated rectangle of flat white—there is a stirring of post-siesta activity. There is a gathering of village elders, all in white kurtas, who have lit the communal hookah and broken out the cards. Mahavir himself is on his charpoy, eyes still resolutely closed. His wife Daya has swung into action. The family’s immense black buffaloes have been led out of the shed, their troughs filled with feed. Daya is laying out the buckets she will use for milking.

Mahavir opens his eyes abruptly, pulls out his phone and scolds someone at the other end: “Where’s your daughter? We start in five minutes. Tell her to run.”

He stands up and shuffles towards the house. It’s not a house. It’s a large wrestling hall: a double-sized mat on one side, top-of-the-line weight machines in another, thick ropes dangling from the high ceiling, and a series of small windows overlooking lush farmland.