CHENNAI: Sports biopics, especially Indian ones, often have a tendency to deviate from facts to melodramatic fiction whenever convenient. Farhan Akhtar as Milkha Singh had some of his earliest training runs above moving trains. Chak De! India often played around with the rules of hockey for dramatic effect. Aamir Khan’s Dangal is no different. It does fulfill its purpose of course — everyone knows Mahavir Singh Phogat and the Phogat sisters, two of them at least. But the real story of the wrestling clan from Balali, with all its complexities and minor characters that the movie chose to ignore in its Chekhovian bid to tighten up the plot, is so much more fascinating than something that you can watch for three hours. And for that, Saurabh Duggal’s Akhada is what you should turn to.
The cover might call it a biography of Mahavir Phogat, but it is, in reality, much more. Through Phogat, Duggal paints pictures that strike a more general chord — the rustic Hariyanvi countryside of the 70s and its surreal social fabric, the awe of a young village boy who migrates to the big city, the shady real estate dealings that New Delhi is still renowned for, the personality dominated politics of the Hindi heartland and of course, as the film chose to remind us again and again, the sheer contempt that women sometimes face when daring to encroach into a man’s world.
The supporting cast gives Akhada a depth that Dangal simply cannot compete with. There is the grandfather, the patriarch who at one point, unable to stand the sight of his granddaughters getting repeatedly punished, has his son by the throat. There are Mahavir’s male students, who despite never attaining the glory that their female counterparts did, were willing sparring partners for their sisters, going through the same grueling routine for a decade for little joy. There is the silent endurance of a woman — Mahavir’s sister in law and Vinesh’s mother — who makes unaccompanied visits to her chemotherapy treatments, just to make sure her family’s routine is not thrown out of sync. All with stories that may be much less glorious, but no less fascinating.
The girls themselves are the most memorable part of the book, their playful tone betraying a simplicity that is fast fading from the modern world. The tricks that Geeta & Co play on their father for a few minutes of extra sleep — setting his alarm clock wrong, draining the inverter — tells of just how punishing their training regime was. Amongst the most poignant part of the book is Vinesh’s narrative about her hair — despite winning a number of medals on the world stage, the young girl is happiest when she finally, like others her age, gets to grow her hair long.
But just as the narrative threatens to follow one of the many subplots, it converges back into Mahavir himself. He is often a contradiction — the indiscipline that characterised his early years departs starkly from the military lifestyle that he enforced on his daughters. His assertion that his daughters can do anything men can do, comes hand-in-hand with his admission that his wife, the elected sarpanch of the village, was a mere proxy for him. Yet it is these contradictions that make Mahavir so much more memorable and relatable than Dangal.
To know how Mahavir Singh Phogat changed the world, Dangal will suffice. But to know the world that he changed, Akhada is what you should turn to.
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com