Smash it with Anger: A scene from a rage room in Delhi Photo: Sandra Kuriakose Smash it with Anger: A scene from a rage room in Delhi Photo: Sandra Kuriakose

A glass bottle arcs through the air and meets a hammer mid-flight. It shatters on impact, shards spraying across and inside the room. Notes from a Taylor Swift track playing outside filters into the cacophonic room, where metal clangs with metal and sometimes ceramic cups and empty beer bottles crash over and over again... until there’s silence.

A few minutes earlier, Farheen* had been sitting outside, staring at a waiver form. Sign here, it said. She complied. A 24-year-old consultant, she needed an outlet to vent her rage. “A socially acceptable” one, she clarified. She wanted a place where she could let loose, swing a hammer and break things. All in a “controlled environment”, so that “nobody gets hurt.”

On recommendation from her therapist, she arrived at an establishment that promised just that. “I am not putting on any music and I hope you hear my rage and figure out how frustrated one can be,” she said, just before she walked through the door leading to the ‘Rage Room.’

After 10 minutes of angry metal clanging against the table, walls and sounds of splintering ceramic and glass, she emerged, looking victorious, still, calm and in quiet contemplation. “Now I have to go and attend that meeting at work.” Asked if the cathartic exercise helped, she said she wasn’t too sure, but added that it felt better in the moment.

In the Rage Room, one can experience and engage in a socially palatable form of venting anger for a price.

Dhruv, 21, a student, content creator and businessman, and his partner, Khushi, found the Rage Room on Instagram. Delhi natives, they came to create content, bond and “break things to hopefully feel better about their stresses.”

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“Our generation overthinks a lot, about life, career, relationships. This place sounds like a great place to drown those noises and engage in destruction since killing another person is not an option,” Dhruv says.

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Rage Rooms are catching on in the city. Visitors step in, take a moment to absorb the chaos, then sign a waiver. Once done, they suit up with safety jackets, helmets, gloves, shoes and get ready to unleash controlled destruction. “People love to play their music and break things to their own tunes,” says Sanjeev Giri, the manager of Rage Room, Delhi. “Arjan Vailly from Animal movie is among the most played songs here.”

Not So Sabbath

Sundays see the most footfall at the Rage Room, while weekdays bring a trickle of visitors. Weekends are booming. Generally, two kinds of patrons walk in. Those seeking a thrill and those genuinely angry. Both need an outlet. Content creators also drop by, filming their experiences while promoting the place, says Giri, adding that personal and professional pressures drive people here, making it a therapeutic exercise. Their audience spans 18 to 70 years, but women form a significant share. “Alone or with a group of friends or their partners, women are the ones who come here often to experience the rage room and express rage, which I think comes from all sorts of stresses in their lives,” Giri says.

At 4:30 pm, three friends, Khushi, Aparna and Juhi, walk into the Rage Room, their laughter filling the space, briefly drowning out the chaos inside. “Men are always raging in the streets, on the roads, in the house, at work. It is acceptable for a man to be angry, but women need to keep up the facade of being civilised and ‘soft’. My stresses are immense, but where do I vent without being recommended to a psych ward?” asks Juhi.

While spaces like Rage Rooms offer momentary catharsis, it’s worth asking: why are we Always so angry?

Aparna, 28, an IT professional and newly married, came to the Rage Room to cope without judgement. She believes women, with their heightened emotional quotient, naturally gravitate toward a space where they can pay to break things,betef.com an outlet society rarely affords them. “There are things one cannot say. Now that I am married, there has been a dramatic shift in my lifestyle. Not everything that can be expressed can be articulated.So here I am, to break things with my best friends and hope the rage subsides even for a little while,” she says, with a glint of hope in her eyes as she turns to her friends.

Ashima Gupta, a clinical psychologist and emotion-focused therapist, is of the opinion that the expression of anger in a healthy manner is something that is neither taught nor accepted; therefore, the rage bottles up and manifests itself in ways that might be unsafe. “Ours is a shame-based society. A failed marriage, a child’s poor grades or losing a job are seen as personal failures one should be ashamed of. To make it worse, the relentless pace of life leaves little room to cope,” she says.

Raging Against the Dying of the Light?

We live in the age of social media, where outrage is universal, regardless of who you are or where you stand politically. What doesn’t kill you only makes you angrier. From personal struggles to work stress to the looming global crisis, anything can trigger rage. “Social media acts as a catalyst, or rather, adds fuel to the fire. It has weakened, questioned, and threatened our already fragile self-esteem. It has made humiliation, ridicule and belittlement effortless. We’ve grown desensitised to these subtle forms of aggression, creating an unsafe environment that often manifests as rage,” says Gupta. It’s a loop, she explains. “Internalised shame makes us prone to outbursts, and those outbursts, in turn, lead to further embarrassment.”

Gupta believes Rage Rooms create a false perception of a safe space where people can express anger without being seen as “crazy.” Anger, she says, signals a violation and the inability to express that pain in a non-judgemental space can lead to loneliness. “Rage Rooms aren’t necessarily a product of this loneliness, but they might offer a space to ventilate,” she adds.

What Do You Seek?

“Killing a person is not acceptable” is a phrase one rarely expects to hear, yet many visitors to the Rage Room mention it. Some say it in jest, others matter-of-factly. Either way, it remains unsettling. While this sentiment was common among several visitors, Aparna and her friends came seeking a non-judgemental space to experience power, relief, control and catharsis. To the beat of a song, they tore the room apart in 15 minutes. When they emerged, visibly spent, Juhi said nothing when asked if she felt different, while Aparna replied, “I’m not sure if I felt better, but it was something to do.”

Rachana Johri, visiting professor at BMU’s School of Liberal Studies, Gurugram, acknowledges that Rage Rooms may provide a coping mechanism, but she doubts their transformative potential. “The idea of processing rage therapeutically has existed for a while. It can be helpful to express anger, but breaking things in an unfamiliar setting, without an interlocutor to listen, assist or help unpack that anger, can be cathartic but not therapeutic,” she explains. Catharsis, she adds, has its limits. Johri sees the rise of Rage Rooms, especially among women, as a sign of the times—where safe spaces for open conversations about anger remain scarce. She believes a sense of powerlessness drives people to these rooms but questions whether venting rage in a controlled setting offers lasting relief.

Rage as Leisure

Anger and rage are natural emotions, but acting them out may not be the solution. While spaces like Rage Rooms offer momentary catharsis, it’s worth asking: why are we so angry? One answer could be late-stage capitalism, which thrives on our rage while selling us a place to vent it, offering temporary relief, depending on who we are and what fuels our fury.

Anger and shame can be isolating, says Gupta. “Instead of seeking compassion, which foster healthier responses, people are turning to temporary outlets for their anger. We need to create spaces where people feel heard without being made to feel like failures. As social beings, we rely on each other to survive. If raging becomes a leisure activity, it only pushes people further apart. Breaking things in a room doesn’t help in the long run—it only breaks something within,” she says.

On the way to a Rage Room, one might expect raging death metal playing in the background, pieces of glass from beer bottles and ceramic cups crashing everywhere in slow motion, the metallic banging of the hammer on the walls and tables and importantly, a visceral outlet for emotions raging. As cinematic as it sounds, one is forced to wonder about the times we live in, when even rage can be viewed through the prism of leisure.

(Divya Tiwari is a video journalist based out of Delhi)

(This article is a part of Outlook's March 11881bet, 2025 Women's Day special issue 'Women at Work'. It appeared in print as 'Rage Against The Machine’)