By day Amol Patil, 23, is a security guard, standing in a sentry box outside a company office in Mumbai, his limbs coiled inside a polyester uniform. By evening, when he enters the hallowed square of the clay pit, he is released in a blaze of brute force.

Patil is a wrestler of the traditional Indian school of mud-clay wrestling called kushti which dates back to the Mughals and is passed down from generation to generation. Kushti is practiced in an akhara, or wrestling academy, where everything is governed by strict rules in an atmosphere of austerity.

“My father and grandfather were kushtis in the village of Kohlapur where we lived but they were too poor to pursue it,” Patil says. “They had no money for the rich food and fruits you need. I started training when I was 10 as a way of fulfilling their dreams of glory.”

Kushti provides a route to fame and money for Indian boys from poor families.

Patil was lucky in that by the time he began training, his brother had got a job in the police force. “That meant we had some money to buy the almonds, milk, eggs, mutton, butter and fruit I needed in my diet,” he says. Training was, in his words, “torture”. “What I hated the most was when my father used to wake me up at 4.30am. I hated him.”

Clockwise from top: Amol Patil poses holding a traditional club, a Persian meel; a poster of the US bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman; a weightlifting training session

“In the cold, in the monsoon, to run for hours in the fields, then come back and do exercises and weights. Then go to school, come home and start training again. There was no fun or relaxing.”

Patil happened to be the shortest and lightest boy in the group. His father had to really pump him up to wrestle with the bigger and stronger boys. Gradually, his body developed and his stamina levels rose.

It feels good when you know your body is in peak condition and can handle anything,” he says.

At 18, Patil left his village to join an akhara on Arthur Road in Mumbai. Life in an akhara has a touch of monasticism about it. Drinking and smoking – and sometimes even sex – are forbidden in the relentless quest for purity, physical grace and strength.

The building itself is invariably shabby but the aura of solemn and single-minded dedication lifts it above plainness. All the messy divisions of Indian society are left at the door. “No one here cares if you are Hindu or Muslim or what caste you belong to. If we worship anything, it is the body,” Patil says.

Left to right: a bench press lies in the gym of the akhada; a wrestler rests in the storage room while waiting for training to begin at Mahatma Phule akhada in Mumbai.

The floor is specially prepared from a centuries-old formula of dirt, water, red ochre, buttermilk and oil and turned over and over until it becomes like a crumbly, reddish-yellowish cake mixture. Here wrestlers do their exercises, weights using dumb-bells made of wood or stone, calisthenics, rope-climbing and yoga.

Patil’s proudest moment was winning a gold medal at a national level tournament in 2015. His home village went wild with excitement. But kushti wrestlers do not dream too much of medals or international tournaments. Their main dream is mundane – that success in kushti will help them get a government job. The Indian government reserves a certain number of jobs for people who have made a mark in sport, in an attempt to encourage sporting prowess with the promise of financial security.

Amol Patil wrestling with a member of the Shree Laxmi akhada in Mumbai

Such a job is by no means guaranteed. Patil is a science graduate but works as a security guard. He is trying to get something better. His job limits his training to early mornings and late evenings. He loves kushti but sees it dying out all over India, replaced by more contemporary forms of wrestling.

“I am glad I was able to do what my father and grandfather couldn’t do because of poverty but I can see why it is dying,” Patil says. “It is too much hard work and nothing much to show for it.”