Episode 25: The DJ Truck

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

The DJ truck had been playing the same song for twenty minutes.

It sat nose-first against the temple wall, speakers stacked six high on the flatbed, bass shaking the marigolds someone had strung from the temple gate to the first sugarcane-juice stall. Behind it, three more trucks, nose to tail, each one louder than the last. The drivers sat on their hoods eating peanuts, waiting for their turn.

The temple road was closed to traffic. Boleros lined both sides, bumper to bumper, some with family names painted on the doors in gold. Between them, everything: sugarcane stalls with their presses grinding, a man selling balloons from a bicycle, women in bright saris moving in groups of four and five, children running through the spaces grown-ups couldn’t fit through. A cotton-candy machine by the water tank put out a cloud of burnt sugar that mixed with dust and diesel and the last of the spring heat.

Gopina stood by the juice stall with her notebook open and her pen cap between her teeth.

Mohit had sent her. Three photos, two quotes, one paragraph. Color piece. She had the photos. She did not have the quotes yet.

“Gopina!”

Mama-ji came through the crowd like a man late for his own wedding. White vest, white shorts, a towel around his neck, and wrestling shoes he had oiled that morning until the whole house smelled like the akhaada.

“Did you see the pit?” He grabbed her arm. “They’ve built it up proper this year. Sand from Jhajjar. Baba Ramji arranged it himself.”

“Mama-ji, I’m working.”

“Working, she says. Write this down. Baba Ramji’s akhaada, veterans’ exhibition bout, four-thirty sharp. Write that.”

“It’s not that kind of article.”

“It’s a mela article, isn’t it? The bout is in the mela. Two and two.” He straightened his towel. “I’ve been training for six weeks.”

“You told us. Every morning.”

“Because nobody listens the first time.” He looked around the crowd like a general surveying his field. “Six weeks. My knees have never been better.”

He jogged off before she could answer. The crowd closed behind him.

· · ·

The akhaada had been built up at the center of the mela ground, a wide circle of packed sand roped off with bamboo posts and red cloth. A raised platform on one side held the announcer, his microphone, a notebook, and a bottle of something he kept under his chair.

The crowd pressed in three deep around the ropes. Gopina found a gap between two men arguing about grip technique and wedged herself in, notebook flat against the bamboo.

The announcer leaned into the microphone. His voice came through the speakers like a man shouting inside a metal drum.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THE VETERANS’ EXHIBITION. A DISPLAY OF STRENGTH, COURAGE, AND THE ANCIENT TRADITION OF —” He checked his notebook. “— THE ANCIENT TRADITION OF DANGAL.”

Someone behind Gopina said, “He’s drunk.”

“He’s always drunk.”

“Last year he called Ramesh by his wife’s name.”

Mama-ji stood at the edge of the sand, rolling his shoulders. Across from him, a man fifteen years younger and thirty kilos heavier was doing the same, but with the ease of someone who had done this before and expected to do it again.

The announcer said, “REPRESENTING BABA RAMJI’S AKHAADA — SURESH VERMA.”

A small cheer. Mostly from mama-ji himself.

The bell rang. A real bell, brass, tied to a bamboo post with wire.

Mama-ji advanced. His opponent advanced. They circled once. Mama-ji reached forward. The other man did something fast and low that Gopina didn’t entirely follow, and then mama-ji was on his back in the sand, legs in the air, looking at the sky as though he had no idea how he’d gotten there.

Nine seconds. She had counted.

The crowd cheered. Not because he’d won. Because he’d entered. The announcer shouted something about the spirit of the akhaada. Mama-ji got to his feet, brushed sand from his vest, and raised both arms over his head the way a man raises both arms when he has won a war, not when he has been thrown flat in nine seconds.

“DID YOU SEE THAT?” He found Gopina at the ropes. Sand in his hair, sand in his ears, grinning wide. “I lasted longer than Inder. Inder went down in six.”

“You were very fast,” Gopina said.

“Write it down,” he told her. “Write it down.” He walked off toward the water tank with the towel draped over his head like a champion’s flag.