Text: Arun Venugopal. Photograph: Paresh Gandhi

Once he started competing on the world stage, he had to cut his long hair, shave his beard and forgo the turban.

"When you belong to a religion, it's hard," he says, stretching out his long legs. "But that was the rules."

In 2000, Singh went to Sydney to compete in the Olympics. No Indian had ever won a medal in boxing and Singh was considered the country's best hope of ending that drought. In the quarterfinals, he went up against Ukrainian Andri Fedtchouk.

What followed is in Singh's mind a sham: he contends that the judges ignored punches he landed on his opponent, and counted his opponent's punches on his elbows. Singh narrowly lost on points, and was denied even a bronze.

But it is what happened in the aftermath of the bout that truly irks him. Rather, what did not happen. The Indian Olympic team would not lift a finger in protest, he says, and the media were no better. They practically ignored him in the run up to the Olympics, only now choosing to highlight his defeat. His gripe against the press surfaces often, and he asks, half joking, if the photographs we take of him will land up in a trash bin.

Singh returned to India as an angry man.

Also see: Where No Man Has Gone