Visakhapatnam’s cafes are a den for board games

Waiting for food has never been so much fun as some cafes in Visakhapatnam give their customers board games to play

Girls enjoying a game of Jenga at the Mid Town Cafe in Visakhapatnam

It is a sultry Wednesday evening in Visakhapatnam and the only Belgian Waffle outlet in the city is thrumming with activity. The constant hum of the air conditioner is broken frequently by hoots as a group of college-going students play Jenga. Just a few chairs away from them is a 30-something couple who are looking daggers at each other over a chess board.

Belgian Waffle is making its cafe experience even sweeter! Its owner Sachin Mony says, “We bake the waffles fresh after receiving an order. While it takes anywhere between 15-20 minutes for a waffle to be made, we decided to give our patrons something to occupy themselves with as they wait. So, we introduced board games. They are cheap, fun and do not occupy much space.” So in sweet anticipation customers to the cafe can play Jenga, chess, Uno and Four in a Row.

Students busy with a game of Ludo over a cup of coffee at the Mid Town Cafe in Visakhapatnam Photo : K.R. Deepak /The Hindu

Most preferred board games in the city

• Uno
• Jenga
• Snakes and ladder
• Ludo
• Chess

Away from the screens

And that works perfectly for 72-year-old Ramesh Murthy who is on a mission to wean his seven-year-old grandson Rohan from video games and cartoons on TV. “He is an only child and quite an introvert, so he spends most of his time staring at screens at home. The waffles are a way of getting him out of the house and having him speak to others. Social networking need not always be online,” grins the grand dad. Reminiscing his own childhood days, Ramesh says “Even Ludo or Snakes and Ladders were fancy for us. We just played with anything we had, be it broken bricks used as steps for Lagori or tamarind seeds as soldiers in Ludo. Those are the days worth remembering. Will you ever recall your highest score on a videogame as a childhood memory?” he asks. K Koti who works at the outlet says he has observed how earlier the customers would mindlessly scroll through their phones as they waited for their order to be delivered. “But now there are people who spend hours here playing board games.” The scene is something similar at Mid Town Cafe that opened last year.

Uno card game was developed by Merle Robbins in Ohio, USA in 1971

One of its regulars is 24-year-old R Nishikant has ample of stories from his childhood where friendships were made and broken over card games. His fondest memories of summer vacations are playing Snakes and Ladders and Ludo with his cousins. “There were nail-biting moments playing Ludo. I would send up a prayer asking for a six before rolling the dice,”he laughs saying he will never forget those moments. Nishikant still spends his evenings playing board games with his friends here. “In a world of Facebook, Instagram, Pokemon Go and PubG, board games are booming. There are a lot of regular customers who come in to play games and hang around in the evenings ,” says Vijay, owner of Mid Town Café.

Boys indulged in a game of carom at the Gallery in Visakhapatnam

Say it the gaming way

• Grok A term used to describe someone you has understands something intuitively. A player doing well at a game is said to have ‘groked’ it.
• Traitor mechanic These games involve one or more players who pretend to be working with the group though they are actually working to sabotage the group plan.
• Pie Rule Also called Swap rule, this technique is used in games where a first move advantage has been demonstrated. In such cases, the second- move player can swap roles with first-move player.

The old school way

The Gallery has gone a step further and has six of its table tops printed with the snakes and ladder game. Walk into at the café in the evenings and you will bump into students laughing over a game of carom or arguing over Snakes and Ladders. The board games were not a part of the plan, says Umesh Makhijani, owner of The Gallery. “Just two days before the opening a friend suggested that we should add games to make the place stand out. Hence we got the Snakes and Ladders board printed on the table tops. The kind of response these games got was impressive and we later added Ludo. Carom has been the latest addition,” he says.

The Gallery also has books and is happy to have its customers flip their pages as they sip their coffee. “Initially we allowed people to take the books home, but not many of the borrowed ones were returned. So now we only allow reading in the cafe,” he adds.