When Ashoo Sharma enters an akhara, it is to shoot, not wrestleIt is an innocent curtained door that leads into the akhara — a darkened courtyard and a very different world. One that is divided into a series of raised platforms, where musclemen caked in mud lock each other in a deathly embrace and nobody wants to blink first. In this formidable world of the akhara, which changes scrawny village boys into men with iron triceps, photographer Ashoo Sharma’s Nikon camera has been romancing sweat-stained fighters as they prepare for supremacy. Sharma’s ongoing exhibition at the India Habitat Centre, “Wrestling and Delhi”, provides a small glimpse into a huge body of work collected over two years. The foyer of the Delhi-O-Delhi restaurant displays large prints of youngsters who are all muscle and threatening eyes. “But look a little closer into those eyes,” urges Sharma, “And you’ll see shades of insecurity, even fear. Almost all of them are from lower middle-class homes who hope their wrestling prowess will earn them a job some day.” It is the hidden story that Sharma has set out to tell — what goes into building those muscles. One shot is of lanky teenagers awkwardly trying our bodybuilding exercises. “Hundreds of boys come to the akharas of Delhi from the villages of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. And almost all of them dream of a good job,” he says. Another photograph — all are untitled — shows a wrestler in his room, a pile of aluminium trunks dumped in the background. Sharma explains that the boys’ luggage is frequently kept outside “since there’s no place in the small rooms for them and their boxes”. Though Sharma, who works as a medical photographer at Safdarjung Hospital, has shot all the prominent akharas of Delhi, like the Chandgi Ram Akhara and the Nabi Karim Akhara, most of the photographs on display are of the Guru Hanuman Akhara at Roshanara Bagh. It is his favourite venue, he says, because of the contrast of the yellow wall and blue doors and the picturesque interiors. The Nabi Karim Akhara is where he goes most weekends because there’s a fight every Sunday. Then, there’s the Chhattrasal Stadium where all youngsters want to emulate Sushil Kumar, their boy who brought home an Olympic bronze.Sharma’s photographs show the wrestlers in life-size, an obvious result of his own childhood fascination with the neighbourhood akhara near Mehrauli. “It has closed down now, but I used to wonder at the lives of men who spent all day exercising and eating,” he smiles. The routine remains much the same even today, he says, in the Delhi akharas. “It costs around Rs 500 per day to feed these lads,” he informs. Then, there is the almost daily routine of massages — one print shows a pahalwan, eyes shut in bliss, getting his head massaged while his fellow fighter looks at him oddly. “When they aren’t baying for each others’ blood, even fighters can laugh,” says Sharma. Each photograph is priced at Rs 10,000.The exhibition is on at India Habitat Centre till October 31
