Gone in 42 Seconds

It is one of the all time classic scenes from Bollywood: A fair, curly-haired Parthian-looking thug roughs up Amitabh Bachchan’s Anthony Gonsalves in Amar Akbar Anthony. Comically possessive of Parveen Babi, he gets beaten up in the end. His character was called Zabisco, a name intriguingly Dickensian. It required a kind of intellectual creativity not associated with Manmohan Desai who belonged to (instituted?) a zanier and more common school.

If Zabisco appears appropriate, it is because there was a real-life Zabisco or more accurately, Zybyzko. Stanislaus Zybyzko, an intellectual among the wrestlers, was among the greatest strongmen of the modern era, the man who had defeated the elite grapplers of his day like Dr.Roller and Youssef Mahmout. Zbyszko was also the man who went down in 42 seconds to the Great Gama. That is right – 42 seconds in a free-style catch-as-catch-can battle.

Gama may have been the last great Indian wrestler to storm the wrestling pits of Old Europe but he was certainly not the first. As early as 1892, Karim Baksh defeated English champion and professional wrestler Tom Cannon in a fight in India. Baksh was followed by Gulam, who may have been the first Indian fighter to actually perform and win in Europe. In a sense then, Karim, Gulam and even other great champions like Rahim Sultaniwala had set stage for stalwart Indian wrestlers who take on the best that Europe could offer and hold their own. “Europe� of course was a loose term in an era when swarthy Bulgarian wrestlers would claim to be Orientals with names like Ahmed Madrali, the Turk.

The Great Gama first shot to fame in 1892 when he participated in a physical demonstration held by the Rajah of Jodhpur, Jaswant Singh. Gama, then still the ten-year old Ghulam Mohammed, participated in an endurance competition of baithaks. Early in the morning started the competition, 400 burly wrestlers, well-oiled, stalwart and mustachioed, steadily rising and dropping on their haunches in fierce synchronicity. One by one, they dropped, till around by early noon, only hundred were left and by late noon, the count dropped to 15. The field lay strewn by the spent bodies of well trained adult fighters pushed beyond the limit, while the 15 residual champions continued to grunt and rise and drop in par-human stoicism and strength. The Rajah stood up and announced an end to the competition that he felt had clearly gone too far. Few would deny, he said, the winner has to be this ten-year old stripling. The boy was bed-ridden for a week but the warning bell had been rung : Endurance beyond human measure was already in place. In the next few years, Ghulam would build the strength and technique to go with it.

It was not an easy routine and some of it may scarcely seem true when seen from the distance of 120 years that separate us. His diet alone was prodigious – Six chickens, eleven pounds of mutton mixed with a good helping of ghee, 10 litres of milk and any quantity of almond paste and finally a Getafixian magic potion called Yakhi which appears to be a gelatinous mix of bones, joints and tendons.

But even more remarkable was his daily routine – It started prosaically enough – gentle repetitions of the dip till the count reached gargantuan proportions and Gama’s unique, almost terrifying endurance shone through. Afternoons were spent in the baithak, again in the trademark Gama Ironman style. Interspersed through the day between eating and resting, were bouts with his champion mates like Imam Bux and Gunga who both had European reputations of their own, even if not in the league of the Gama. His first professional success came in 1904 when he won the Pehlwani tournament by the Maharaj of Rewa followed by other successes across the country. In the next three-four years, Gama defeated almost every important Indian wrestler till he finally met Rahim Sultaniwala in 1909. Sultaniwala, a student of both Gulam (the first European winner) and the modern Bheem, Ramamurthy, stood 6ft 11 inches and around 300 pounds to Gama’s 5ft 7 inches and perhaps 200 pounds. No one gave the smaller man a chance. The two men met in the ring twice, each fight lasting at least an hour. No clear winner was declared but Sultaniwala’s powers were clearly on the decline, making way for the new star on the firmament.

Finally, with nothing left to prove on the sub-continent, Gama left for London, in a trip financed by a nationalistic businessman, Sharad Kumar Mishra, who wanted to demonstrate Indian physical strength and Kusthi/Pehalwani tradition to the Imperial masters. Gama’s troupe issued an open challenge, to any and all wrestlers, promising to throw any three challengers within 30 minutes. They had stumbled into a cozy world, that operated on the principles on business and entertainment rather than strength and technique and victory that Gama craved. English magazines bemoaned Gama’s “hopeless quest and the cowardice of the crop of professional wrestlers� who were more interested in providing “lucrative employment to Gama (provided he was ready to go down) rather than take up his challenge�. In a sense, Gama arrived a bit late on the scene. The days of dare-all fighting were over along with bare-knuckle boxing and the “professionals� had taken over. One correspondent wrote that the “paramount thought in the Indian’s mind is that the quicker his opponent is defeated the greater is the credit due to himself. He is not wrestling with one eye on his adversary and one on the spectators. He is not speculating on the effect his wrestling may have on future engagements. At the moment there is only one thing to be done: to put his man down as soon as may be.�

Great wrestling perhaps, but surely bad business. It was hardly surprising then that after five months of futile attempts, Doc Roller finally agreed to fight Gama. The first fight lasted 1 minute and 40 seconds. The next time around, Roller had learnt his lessons. He could carry on 9 minutes and 10 seconds. A subsequent match with Zybyzko ended in disgrace for the Pole who stayed flat on the mat for 2.5 hours, giving the Indian no room for purchase. Amidst booing audiences and a furious Gama, the match was called a draw. With nothing left to prove in Europe, and perhaps frustrated with the managed environment there, Gama returned to India in 1910 and once again took on the great names of the land. But 1916, Gama had run out of Indian opponents as well and did no real fighting for till 1928. Zybyzko was invited for a re-match during the Patiala trade fair. Amongst the huge crowds were Maharajahs, Nawabs, Governors of provinces and of course the Maharajah of Patiala himself. This was the match that lasted all of 42 seconds. Gama’s fighting days were coming to an end. He was nearing fifty and was still considered in three continents to be the greatest fighter alive. Gama had one final match with Jesse Petersen in Lahore. Petersen was another European champion, a regular winner at Greco-Roman tournaments. Gama, fifty and wheezing, dispatched him in 90 seconds.

This was to be the last professional fight for Gama though he appears to have been a fixture in local tournaments through the thirties. Stunningly, through out his career, every match that he won was finished within ten minutes. His draws were of the appalling Zybyzko variety where his opponent would lie prone on the ground for hours. And there is no record of his actually having lost a match, ever.

Gama’s last years were not easy. He had five sons, none of whom survived him. His last son’s death, at the age of thirteen, in 1945 left him a broken man. He chose to remain in Pakistan after partition and by 1951 was reduced to selling his silver maces and raising pathetic challenges to the world, promising to take on anyone, anytime at the age of 75. The industrialist, G.D.Birla, found out about his sorry state and arranged a pension of 300 Rupees a month. The Pakistani government too woke up and arranged for free medical treatment. Perhaps the last days of Gama were not too bad. In a last meeting, in 1961, a journalist describes Gama, lying in the hospital racked with arthritis, alone and confused. All that remained of this stalwart, honest and powerful fighter was a powerful hand-grip. Because this visiting journalist was, well…white, he was accompanied by VIPs and military attaches who handed over a cheque for 400 Rupees. Gama, the journalist recollects, broke down.

Two months, later in reply to a request, the Director of Public Relations wrote “"Gama died 5/22/60. With the passing of this man ends an epic." Incredibly, callous bureaucracy had got it piercingly right, when it least mattered.