gurgaon as a preadolescent bharat varma ravva was as big a videogame buff as any 12yearold is expected to be long hours were spent at the gaming console with bharat heavily involved in a twodimensional rivalry part of a computergenerated scuffle which took the form of the popular videogame called tekken the objective back then was to beat your opponent to pulp avoiding at the same time being yourself beaten to pulp now over a decade later as bharat gets better and better at tekken the objective remains the same only the setting has changed earlier he used to play for fun on this day he is playing the same game for a place at the electronic sports world championship that will be held in october this year in paris and now that he has won the qualifiers held in gurgaon on sunday and is on his way to paris he still feels that no matter how professional gaming becomes the pleasure it gives you never blunts this was the first gaming tournament i ever took part in and i am glad that it turned out well he says bharat was among the eight finalists from across the country who were brought to gurgaon by the gaming firm nodwin gaming which organized sundays event i have been playing five hours daily for many years now and i suppose having a tournament is good for developing your skills it changes your gameplay bharat is from vihakhapatnam and has just attained a degree in computer science which still seems like a safer career choice than gaming at the moment it isnt likely but some years later i can see this becoming a career two winners were selected in two different games at sundays gaming challenge and apart from bharat the 26yearold brandy singh excelled in a game named street fighter and will be making a second trip to the annual gaming challenge to be held in las vegas this year i attended the same tournament in vegas last year also and made it to the quarter finals this time will be better hopefully he says for sundays event brandy turned up with his personal arcadestick controller of the kind that used to be during the heyday of gaming parlours in the 90s i bought it from the philippines and i take it to all gaming tournaments in the last one year alone brandy has attended around eight gaming championships and has managed to win several of them you need to read a lot and understand the setup of the game and develop a gameplaying style that only comes after years of practice he has trained to be a commercial pilot and might soon become one but not at the cost of videogaming gaming will always be among my priorities