The Dangal between reel and real

First things first, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Dangal. I have done dozens of reviews on this blog and I am usually very lenient with films as long as I had a blast watching them and they either entertained me or made me think or, the best case scenario, both. As a film and a story, Dangal, telling the story of how Mahavir Singh Phogat, a former wrestler decided to mould his daughters into world champion wrestlers despite massive odds and the added difficulty of having to break patriarchal norms in the state of Haryana in general and the sport of wrestling in particular, is quite meticulously made. 

There is a lot of differences between the reel and real story, some understandable, some baffling.

It is what you would expect of an Aamir Khan project, which typically rival the gestation periods of Asian elephants, but also usually produce results just as majestic. Its attention to technical details about the sport was phenomenal and the way the young actors – unknown faces picked after gruelling auditions – portrayed the sisters Geeta and Babita on screen was fantastic hitting all the right notes, whether with the humour or the drama. The entire mix was hugely entertaining despite a few flaws, most of which had to do with narrative short cuts and cliched sports movies tropes. But my first reaction after stepping out of the theatre was that its technical and casting brilliance had atoned well for its laziness in other places. Having said that, I was indeed curious to find out a bit more about the background of Mahavir and his remarkable daughters, both of whom I had seen in action during the Commonwealth Games and the younger, Babita and her cousin Vinesh, more recently in the Rio Olympics. In the adaption of any true story (I have spoken about it in my reviews of Airlift and Argo), filmmakers typically take a lot of dramatic and creative license to define conflicts, issues and motivations of the characters more sharply in the narrative, where they don’t have the luxury of time. I expected the writers of Dangal to have done the same and just to address my curiosity I picked up ‘Akhada – The Authorized Biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat’ by Saurabh Duggal, a journalist with the Hindustan Times. Duggal’s book would have been better served had it been carried as a long form article in a newspaper or magazine, but nonetheless is competent piece of work that gives us reasonable (and for the most part, in decent detail) context and background about this remarkable story of female wrestlers emerging in a male dominated sport that is nestled within a male dominated milieu. 

I found a few important differences that I feel need to be pointed out, if only to not let the film version’s artificial binaries and black and white depictions colour over a more nuanced story. 

1. Mahavir has a son

The film posits that Mahavir was obsessed with turning his daughters into champion wrestlers to fulfil a dream he had hoped his son would fulfil, but despite having four children he had no son. He is shown to be visibly disappointed when the midwife is repeatedly shown breaking the news that ‘it is a girl, again’. The key difference between reel and real is that Geeta and Babita do have a brother, Dushyant, who is younger to them but isn’t really into wrestling. But, crucially, the book clarifies that Mahavir was the one delighted at the announcement of having been blessed with a baby daughter; it was his wife who seemed crestfallen as was some of the rest of his family, a not uncommon sight in Haryana, where the sex ratio in India is one of the lowest. The real Mahavir was motivated by just the idea that no one was claiming the incentives the government had announced for Olympic champions so he wanted to address that void and the fact that he was someone who did not believe in discriminating between genders, a possible offshoot of the fact that he had spent a lot of time outside the state because of a property business he ran in Delhi. 

2. Geeta and Babita both won in 2010.

In the film, the focus is clearly on Geeta, the eldest sister and her quest for glory at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 held at New Delhi. And while it is true that she was the first female Indian wrestler to win a Commonwealth Games medal, her sister Babita was a contestant in the other weight category and won a medal after her. In the film, for obvious reasons, we never get to see Babita competing. Interestingly, Geeta did beat a wrestler from Wales in the first round, one from Nigeria in the semi final and an Australian in the final at the Games as the film depicts but her win in the final came by far easier than is depicted in the movie (once again, dramatic license to make the climax more thrilling, which isn’t necessarily bad per se) – she won in two straight rounds. One of the film’s more egregious tired sports movie trope moves is depicting the fictional Australian wrestler as some kind of mean opponent who deserved her comeuppance like she is a stand in for Ivan Drago in Rocky IV (the worst Rocky, by the way). Oh, and speaking of conflicts…

3. The coaching standoff was far more nuanced

One important source of dramatic tension in the third act of the movie is the friction between Mahavir, who had been Geeta’s coach till she moved to the National Sports Institute in Patiala to prepare for international tournaments, and the coach assigned to her by the institute. Early on they have a face off about training methods and the new coach tells Geeta that she will have to unlearn all that her father has taught her because that is not how international competitions are won. It is true that Mahavir had differences in opinion about the coaching Geeta was receiving at NSI and also true that he tried to intervene and was subsequently barred from coming to the institute or provide any supplementary training; however, the coach P S Sondhi never rally have any of the ugly spats that we see on screen. In fact, Sondhi willingly allowed Mahavir to be at some of the sessions. Even when things came to a head about the NSI and the coach not allowing Mahavir to conduct extra sessions for his daughters himself, Sondhi says that “he didn’t resist our move and later even understood my point”. The egotistically driven Mahavir played by Aamir Khan in the movie doesn’t relent, though, leading to the slightly over the top exchanges we see towards the end, which casts the poor coach in rather unfortunate light. No wonder Sondhi said he was ‘hurt’ on getting to know how the climax panned out.

4. Path of least resistance

The film does remarkably little in highlighting the resistance Mahavir faced from his own extended family about introducing the two girls to wrestling and later even their cousins – there are six Phogat sisters who have represented India at the international level – which could have been mined for rich and nuanced drama. Sakshi Tanwar plays a rather stoic mom whereas the real life mother, Daya Kaur, was far more involved in the kids’ path to becoming wrestlers, even relocating to Patiala when they were at the NSI. In the film, their male cousin, Omkar, is the one who moves to Patiala with his Tauji. In the laser focused film version, Mahavir overcomes most of the resistance – whether in the family, the akhada, or the institute – entirely by himself, whereas in reality support from his brother Rajinder proved crucial. One last point, in its single minded obsessive framing, the film never highlights that while Mahavir imposed wrestling upon his daughters, he was very particular that they finish their education too, something that the book highlights. 

As I mentioned at the beginning, I enjoyed watching Dangal, but at the same time like any other sports movie I wouldnt read too much into its messages – explicit or latent. That doesn’t mean we should let it off the hook either. I highly recommend Saurabh Duggal’s book, it is a breezy read and lends some important perspective while providing us with important details about a rather remarkable story, nuance that at the altar of film marketing, got bedazzled in Dangal, the movie. 

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