Getting to the Rage Room in Basavanagudi, near South End Circle, wasn’t as straightforward as Google Maps suggested. I paced up and down the street, asked shopkeepers, and tried calling the owner. I was frustrated, and ready to break things.
Twenty minutes later, I tried calling Ananya Shetty, its 23-year-old owner, again. “We open only on appointment,” she said.
Fifteen minutes later, she turned up and we walked to a room opposite Krishna Residency. There it was. The Rage Room, its logo done in fiery colours.
I booked a 30-minute ‘Shoot’ session for Rs 699. The package lets you smash five beer bottles, three bricks, two plywood boards, a cardboard box, four thermocol sheets, plastic and metal items, and a punching bag. You get a five-minute trial for Rs 99. The charges are
Rs 299 to Rs 2,999 for sessions varying in duration and items included. Only two people are allowed per session.
The room has a soundproof glass door and a curtain, so it won’t disturb other people in the vicinity.
Ananya asked me to wear a helmet, face shield, gloves, mask, protective jumpsuit and gumboots. Demolish everything except the glass door and prop rack, she said, as she ushered me inside.
A metal bat, some wooden sticks, and a sledgehammer... I spotted my weapons quickly. The hammer was on the heavier side but the bat was easy to wield. Though I had paid for going rogue, I was apprehensive the first couple of minutes.
But soon, I had filled the floor with rubble — thermocol, sand and broken pieces of wood were everywhere, and shards of glass lay alongside mangled metal and upturned furniture. Smashing the bottles was particularly satisfying. You can also play music by connecting your phone to their speaker.
“It felt good but it was exhausting,” I messaged my colleagues soon after walking out.
Ananya connects her customers to a counsellor if they wish.
How it all began
An IIT-Madras graduate, Ananya says if anger and deep-seated frustration are not managed, “they may lead to violent behaviour towards oneself or others.”
“IT professionals and college students in Bengaluru experience a lot of stress. They need a healthy way to vent their anxiety and frustration,” she told Metrolife.
Rage rooms are popular abroad. The global ‘anger room market’ is expected to grow 7.12% annually from 2022 to 2030, according to a report by market research agency Dataintelo.
Ananya says she has given out 30-40 appointments since the Rage Room opened last Saturday. Most are for people between 18 and 30, including teenagers who visited with parents, and couples.
Experts speak
Punching pillows, screaming out loud, splashing cold water on the face and tearing paper are coping strategies well in use in the mental health world, says counselling psychologist Shanu Ben Choudhary.
“We never ask a client to ignore or repress an unhealthy emotion in their subconscious because it can build up and release in an ugly manner later. We teach them ways to let it out for immediate relief,” she says.
She says a rage room should have a mental health professional on standby: “It is easy to open pent-up emotions but difficult to process them and restore normalcy. So if a participant goes out of control, an expert should be on the premises to help.” She is sceptical about an hour-long session in a rage room achieving much.
Rage rooms are more useful to release deep-seated emotions, especially in long-term trauma cases, than to cope with short-term or momentary anger, says psychotherapist Krithika Gopinath.
(With inputs by Barkha Kumari)