The Olympics motto finds exemplary illustration in the spirit with which the Jat Sikhs test their strength, skill and will to win against one another, often only for a kilogram of desi ghee. All over the world young athletes are already lost in thought of that distant day when a secret dream will be realised. When in Atlanta, US, in 1996, they will become that most cherished of things, an Olympian. In Kila Raipur, a small village 11 km form Ludhiana, they don't dream about the Olympics very much. They have a simpler more pragmatic solution: the just stage one every year.

The urban games are damned. Here, amidst the vast expanses of wheat fields and under a gentle winter sun, the spirit of Punjab is soaring. Farming chores have been momentarily forgotten, for the Rural Olympics have begun. Once upon a time in the Punjab they used to say that if you hadn't seen Lahore, you'd never lived. In today's world they say the same about these Olympics. It is no idle boast, for thousands stride the dusty roads that lead to Kila Raipur to take part in and witness this three-day festival that clearly captures the zest and vibrance of this sporting state. Indeed, such is its popularity that this year the Vancouver Tug-of-War club, comprising Punjabis settled in Canada, sent a team down. Said the team captain Gurnam Singh: “Only the fame of the mela brought us here.”

As thousands of dazzling coloured turbans offset a foggy February morning, these rural games with a difference throw up their unlikely heroes. Out here, Carl Lewis does not count. He is welcome of course, but can he race a bullock cart? Ride two horses at the same time? Have a tractor with six men on it roll over him? Or run with a 5 kg plough held between his teeth? Probably not, and that is what makes these Olympics, which are held each year, unforgettable. These Olympics, comprising 40 – 50 events, are a wonderful mix of accepted sporting disciplines and other uncommon pursuits. Quite simply, it is a carnival. Alongside a kabaddi match, a snake and mongoose play a more serious sort of catch. In one corner are the grunting heavies of the tug-of-war; adjacent to them is a cycling race. If you don't like that, there are the folk dancers, the loose limbed hockey tyros and a dog, race, all of it, of course, to the accompaniment of some typically rip-roaring commentary in Punjabi.

Not surprisingly, this became a serious matter. Honour aside, a bullock with an impressive track record could fetch as much as Rs. 1 lakh. Anyhow, the Rajasthani Marwari breed of bullocks was singled out as having the best racing stock. Reared on a diet of grams, desi ghee and mustard oil seeds, they were treated, explained rider Gurmail Singh, “as our sons”. Jockeys were then hired, often at exorbitant rates – Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 10,000 per competition. Their job is to race the bullocks and a small chariot shaped cart across 300 metres in the stadium. Much of the essence of these games lays in their traditions forms of contest. In their ability to find contest where in specific skill is mandatory, but where an ordinary farmer from Gurdaspur on equal terms. And what better than the strong man contest, Shamsher Singh, 62, first shows his powers in swaying the mugdhar (a pair of traditional dumb-bells).

A young Pargat Singh is un-impressed and easily lifts a 70 kg iron cultivator with his teeth. Gurdev Singh, not to be out done, uses his teeth too, this time to pick up four bicycles. Puran Singh, 68, throws down his gauntlet by picking up a huge chariot wheel while Baljeet Singh and Gurbachan Singh push a tractor with their legs. A 20 years old boy throws an open challenge to equal his record of 1,500 sit-ups and bag Rs. 5,000. The crowd goes berserk. Yet these games are not restricted in outlook and are not merely a mela of traditional pursuits. They are, as they always have been, a breeding ground for Punjab's sporting sons of tomorrow. As an aging Zora Singh, who represented India in the 1960 Rome Olympics, says, “The cream of the country's sports persons have been sweating it out here”. He is not joking, for hockey wizards Dhyan Chand, Balbir Singh and Pargat Singh, discuss thrower Parveen Kumar and even India's finest sprinter Milkha Singh once honed their precious skills on these dusty fields.

If these games have launched a hundred heroes then so too, to an extent, has the village of Kila Raipur, Gurbachan Singh, the first native to play for the Indian hockey team in 1936, hails from here. So does Indian hockey coach Balkrishan Singh and Olympic hockey Balbir Singh, wrestlers Jagdish Singh & Kehar Singh and weight-lifter Ramesh Kumar. Today, hockey, a sport once synonymous with Punjab, is again the primary focus of the village's attention, for this year they had five players in the Punjab University team from the village, and six players in the state school hockey team. Says Gurmail Singh, member of the Indian team that won the Olympic hockey gold in Moscow in 1980: “From the legendary village of Sansarpur, the hockey nursery has shifted to Kila Raipur”. The Punjab Government has decided to set up a hockey academy here. Yet, what is most significant is that both this village and these games have been partially responsible in re-igniting a rural sporting awareness in Punjab. About 800 such sports festivals are held in other villages across the state and as Sarwan Singh, a prominent local sports writer explains: “This mela has ushered in a new sport culture in Punjab.”

Although the games have always struck a responsive chord, there have been moments of despair as well for once the shadow of terrorism in Punjab was inescapable. A few years back, the girl's events and cultural shows were abandoned owing to threats but they have been resumed now. In 1991, the mela was cancelled because a bomb was planted in the stadium prior to the inauguration. The following year, though, was the worst of times when Kila Raipur was the site of gruesome massacre. But the spirit of these Olympics is hard to kill the Grewal clan inhabiting these villages still ensures that marriage dates are fixed according to mela days. Even those settled abroad time their visits to coincide with the Olympics. And somewhere along some dusty village road in Punjab, a young man is trying to lift five bicycles with his teeth. The urban Olympics Atlanta is not his dream. He is thinking of Kila Raipur 1995, of people screaming encouragement to him, of the time when he will become a local hero, a “Rural Olympian”.