The Living Room

The Living Room [TLR] has been on my ‘must visit’ list for the last one month. And I am not talking about ‘the living room’, ‘the bathroom’, ‘the kitchen’, ‘the bedroom’ kind of exhibitions that one sees Kanteerava Stadium playing host to. So, this Sunday afternoon when AL called up to confirm our plans for the evening, I suggested we check out TLR.

The Living Room is an ultra-modern Xbox gaming lounge, which consists of eight ‘living rooms’ made up of plush sofas, coffee tables and large flat panel TV’s connected to Xbox 360 gaming consoles. These are also connected through LAN to enable group play. The exposed brick walls, dim lights, black sofas and wooden floors lend a very New York feel to the entire place.

The place was quite empty and only one living room was inhabited. We were greeted by Mohan, the co-owner of the place, and I told him point blank, if we were expected to sit quietly I would do a right about turn and head straight out of that place. He assured us that we could make as much noise as we wanted and noisier the better…. that set the tone for the evening!

I haven’t been on the gaming scene for a long time and let AL pick the games. The first one that we played was ‘Unreal Tournament’, a FPS [first person shooter] game and I quickly realized shooting was not among my better skills and in dire need of some familiar grounds, promptly switched to NFS [Need for Speed], hoping to take that smirk off AL’s face. Bad choice! The “Duke” controllers don’t quite behave like the PC keyboard, and I had absolutely no control on the cars and went around blaming my cars for being ‘drunk’. AL had started to enjoy himself, and being the magnanimous gamer he his, allowed me a few handicaps and still beat me in all the rounds.

One hour gone and I hadn’t done enough screaming and shouting and, more importantly, hadn’t drawn any blood; I was feeling quite depressed. Then came Rohit, the other co-owner, and suggested we try Soul Calibur IV. I had nothing to lose so I promptly agreed.

Soul Calibur IV is a fighting game and the goal is to defeat your opponent by depleting his or her health bar or knocking the opponent out of the “ring”. For the first game AL chose to be Yoda and I was Tira. I KO’ed [knocked out] AL in two consecutive rounds and the screaming and name calling started in earnest. We were beginning to really enjoy ourselves. After twelve rounds, with different characters, we were tied and played a decider in which I beat AL…Whoopeeeee!

We tried a couple more games; Kung Fu Panda and Fight Night and ended our evening with a few rounds of FaceBreaker. The cartoon style boxing game that allows one to break the opponent’s bones had us in splits and screaming for blood in equal measure. Sparrow [Me] beat Kekoa [AL] in all the three rounds, and now I couldn’t keep the smirk off my face!

So, if you are bored of the malls, cafes and movies, grab a few friends, put your feet up, order in burgers and pizzas [Yes! They allow you to do that], get gaming and feel right at home in ‘The Living Room’.

Official website: www.thelivingroombangalore.com

One billion people; One individual Olympic gold

Abhinav Bindra has created history and the media has gone berserk coming up with fancy captions. The entire nation is proud of him. I remember sending text messages to family and friends as soon as I heard the news.

Prior to his feat, I admit, I didn’t know who Abhinav Bindra was or the fact that there is a 10m air rifle event in the Olympics. Can I be blamed? Let’s admit that our nation is crazy about eleven players’ sports [one in particular] and a few elitists claim they enjoy Formula One and Tennis. Other sports merit media space only if there is a controversy or a major victory.

Training and sponsorships for sports that belong to the lesser God are almost non-existent. Abhinav Bindra could afford a private shooting range and training in Germany under an international coach which, along with his hard work and focus, have yielded results. But, how many sportspersons can afford such luxury?

Unless, we want to wait another 100-plus years for a second individual gold, let’s pray that the government and sponsors come forward to lift the lesser known sports out of obscurity or the affluent families groom their children to be sportspersons and not just business tycoons!

And, yes…”Well done, Abhinav Bindra!”