Outside Sushil's home, the 5 x 5 feet Arjuna award poster is coming down. Five men are struggling to hoist a wooden-framed polyvinyl poster of him with the bronze medal, which is more than double the size of the preceding one.
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Sushil's father Diwan Singh has just finished talking to a television channel. "The first TV crew arrived at 1:30 the night after he won the bronze. They left at 2:30. I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before it was time to feed the buffalo. I haven't slept since then. It has been two days," he says.
Then, without any prompting, he begins Sushil's story.
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"He was in Class 6 when we found out that he had a thing for wrestling," he informs. That was the year when Sushil first stepped on a wrestling mat. He cleaned up the zonal, State and National championships in his age category in a matter of three months. The trainers at the neighbouring Azadpur sports facility, who were doubling up as talent spotters at these events, came up to Sushil's parents and asked if they could take their son under their care.
"I was also a wrestler and couldn't achieve anything. I did not want my son to go down the same road, so I allowed him. From then on he has spent the rest of his life at the Azadpur stadium," Diwan Singh says, adding, "he would visit us three or, at the most, four times a year. That was his home and he grew up there."
Soon after joining the facility, Sushil began to rise. "The coaches at the stadium had very high regard for him. The way he trained, it was obvious he was very scared of disappointing them."
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