The Paint War

Violence is a tricky thing. On one hand, we condone it publically. Children are punished for quarrelling with their siblings and friends and adults go to jail if they break some bones. So many laws are present which tell people: do not fight or else the consequences will be grave. People sit in their homes and watch news on wars in middle east and Africa and then say “Why the hell do people need to fight. They are all stupid in that country”.

But even when we make all these laws and rules against violence and march in protests, we actually enjoy is quite a lot. Games are made about killing people and look how great they sell. So much money is earned by their makers because people like to kill stuff or just beat the crap out of something. WWE, UFC are a few examples which show that the same people who condone violence actually love watching it.

Me and my gang had our own little violent fun a few weeks back. Test series had just completed and we were bored out of minds. We had no clue what to do. Sun was too hot and bright to play football or basketball and there was no new game on computer to enjoy. So, we started to plan an outing. Lots of options came up. Most suggestion involved going to a restaurant, eating and coming back to college. It didn’t sound appealing at all. Don’t get me wrong, the mess food here is horrible and I would love to eat out, but I needed to burn off some energy, and so did the others, except Sumit. He likes to stay in his room and study than to play football. Even I have been staying a lot indoors, but that’s mostly because we play football here like we’re waging our own war. There are fights, angry rants, and a lot of fingers go up. Also I got an injury in my foot that prevented me from playing and put a lot of fear in me about football shoes.

But by this time, I was getting agitated staying indoors. We thought of going go karting once again which Tarak liked a lot because of his love of cars. But most of us were not into it, mainly Sumit and Anil because of what had happened the last time.( Read previous post)

Just when we were thinking that there were no more good ideas, Anil came up with one: Paintball. I’ve never played it in my life but it sure seemed like fun. All of us quickly agreed to go. So we decided to bunk classes on Thursday and go. Since it was a weekday, there would be less people. I’ve always been anti-social and therefore this seemed like an impressive idea to me. Garv needed a bit of persuasion as  he prefers not to bunk classes. But after some time, he agreed too.

On Thursday morning, we took a bus at 10 a.m. in the morning. The thickly packed bus dropped us near the railway station of Secunderabad. From there, a 20 minute auto ride took us to our destination. We fit into auto in three groups. I, Sumit and Saras packed ourselves in one and other seven divided into two groups. While my auto left first, we didn’t get there earliest. We got in last. I think it’s because all three of us has a good round belly.

The Paintball studio was pretty huge. It was compound surrounded by a brick wall. We entered through a glass door and were hit in face with cool a.c. air. It was refreshing after being cooped up in an auto. We bought our ticket, which gave us one 40 minutes in the field. The open area was divided into 6 regions, surrounded by cloth and wood polls. We got field 2. When we reached the gate, we were given our guns, a body armour made of plastic, and a helmet. We were advised not to shoot each other in unguarded regions. 

We divided ourselves in groups of 5. My team included me, Anil, Tarak,Vicky and Kartik. We took the left side of the field. The field was covered with plastic obstacles like walls, plastic mountains and a few plastic bushes. The mountains were about 3 feet high and provided excellent cover.

A guy who worked in the studio stood near the gate and whistled, signalling the start of first round.

The first three rounds that lasted about 20 minutes were a lot of fun. Vicky and Anil proved to be quite good shooters. My aim was not so good. I often ended up hitting the obstacles instead of people. However, Kartik played the worst in our team. It was not because he was bad at shooting or anything. He just didn’t want to shoot people .Since the paint pellets hurt when they hit, it was against his non-violence ideology. I was kind of pissed. We had lost two rounds and the fourth round did not seem to be going too good either. Anil and Tarak were out and they still had 4 people left. I had already given up hope but then, Kartik came out with a nice idea.

I started to shoot from behind my boulder, forcing their team to hide. Only Garv was hit by my sudden attack and he was out. While everyone went to cover to avoid my rounds, Vicky started to move left, hiding behind plastic to make sure he was not seen. When I stopped firing, Kartik ran towards right. The other team saw this and shot a barrage of paint pellets but it missed Kartik. I fired again, driving their whole team behind a boulder. Vicky moved further left and ran towards their line, trying to flank them. Amazingly, they took no notice, almost forgetting that one person was not firing. As I stopped, Kartik ran again. They fired but Kartik was able to get in behind a wall and he returned fire from there. Sarvesh, Karan and Sumit; their three remaining players fired towards Kartik, thinking it was a flanking move. But this had been just a diversion. As they fired right, Vicky moved up from the left and shot all three in the back. I shouted  loudly as the plan had worked. I could not remain angry anymore at Kartik. His plan had equalized the scores.

The fifth round began with both sides exchanging fire while hiding behind. I had made up a technique by this time. I fired without seeing, just holding my head up and shooting in the general direction my friends shot at. It had been a good technique for suppressive fire but had not done any real damage. I was counting on my three hotshots: Vicky, Tarak and Anil to beat the other  team.  They all started to flank while Kartik remained with me, firing at the mountains and walls . Vicky moved from left while Tarak and Anil moved from the right. But by this time, the other team knew of this manoeuvre and they counted by flanking us. Intense firing broke out on the the flanks. Tarak was pinned behind a wall. Intense firing forced him to stay there and so Anil went to his help. He squeezed fired suppressing rounds and came behind Tarak’s wall and told him to move.  As Tarak started to move, he saw Karan getting ready to fire. Immediately, he held Anil by shoulders and moved him infront. 4 rounds hit Anil as Tarak, using him as a human shield moved behind a mountain. This pissed  off Anil and he shouted a whole lot of swear words before leaving the field.

Tarak now tried to take advantage of laughter and shot Sumit 3 times. He had left cover and was standing laughing. 2 of my rounds landed on his chest as well. Tarak now tried to shoot Sarvesh but he ducked in time. While he tried to run to another cover, he was shot by Saras and was out. I, Vicky and Kartik tried to fight back, but no more tactics were left. They were using our own tactic against us. I took the right while Vicky took the left. I was shot by Sarvesh while Saras shot Vicky a few seconds later. Kartik was given an option to surrender and he took it. This made the score 3-2 and we lost. I left a little sad but it had been a fun match. There were just two minutes remaining in our time and so we called it a day. We went to McDonald’s and had lunch. Anil was angry at Tarak the whole day. Next day however, a chocolate fudge ice cream made it up and lightened Tarak’s wallet by Rs 40.

While the violence is wrong, this had been a fun experience and can’t wait to shoot some more.