Travel: On Red Soil

- Kushti Wrestling 

Kushti, India's indigenous form of wrestling, has in the past century turned from a once royal national sport into a dying art form. Those who still practice it meet the lengthy hours of its daily regimen with unrelenting devotion—aerobic and weight exercises; culturing the soil on which they wrestle; a diet comprising non-spicy, self-made food; and celibacy. And so, in traditional earthen pits wrestlers still wield the physical and mental intensity that has driven their ancestors for three thousand years.  

A 2004 decision by the Indian Fighters Federation from the capital of New Delhi, which prohibited fighting on red soil and ordered fight clubs to use mattresses instead, may have further diminished Kushti's shrinking role in Indian tradition. This, despite the order's intent to grow the number of Olympic medals for the country—the first being a bronze medal in 1952 to Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, followed by a bronze to Sushil Kumar at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 

- Photographed as personal work and syndicated by Redux Pictures