What's the best way to start a game?

Try to control the centre of the board with your pawns and pieces, develop your knights and bishops to useful active squares, castle your king, move the queen to a square where it supports your position but cannot be harrassed by your opponents pieces, place your rooks on open or semi-open files, don't lose material. Just a rough guideline, sometimes you must respond directly to a threat.

The chess opening is a fight for space, time (developing the right pieces and not moving the same piece twice unless necessary), and force.  How to best develop your pieces is more than a short comment here can adequately explain. Larry Evans and 6 other GM's wrote a book called How to Open a Chess Game, that you may find cheap - it was originally in descriptive notation but that's easy to learn.

There are a number of old but-excellent books that discuss how to open the game and are legally free.

They are also excellent for giving you a good basic understanding of all aspects of the game at the introductory tournament level.

One is Chess Fundamentals by 1920's World Champion Jose Capablanca.  It's here in English. This link is the legally free ("public domain") 1934 edition, to which a group named "Caissa Lovers" changed the old descriptive notation to modern algebraic notation and is relatively short - about 121 pages.

http://www.sources.com/SSR/Docs/Capablanca-ChessFundamentals.pdf

Also, there are public domain books by the 1894-1921 World Champion Emanuel Lasker. His Common Sense in Chess and his Lasker's Manual of Chess are worth a look.  Here are those two in descriptive notation:

http://www.simardartizanfarm.ca/pdf/-_Lasker_s_Manual_of_Chess.pdf

https://ia801408.us.archive.org/14/items/commonsenseinche00laskrich/commonsenseinche00laskrich.pdf

I found the following account of a 2013 comment explaining which old but-excellent chess books are now in the public domain (http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/chess/YaBB.pl?num=1365847618)

"pull out your pieces, nothing can happen to you" used to say to me a 2000 fide friend when I was just beginning.

You should develop your material, control the center and achieve king' safety (i.e. castle).

If the starting position were dynamic and there were many threats, then yes, a move like c6 would be really bad, blocking pieces and having nothing to do with the center, etc.

But in the starting position, both sides are disorganized and have passive pieces. So it's a race to organize them... but also the forces are far apart, so it's not fatal to make some predatory moves, or safeguarding moves, especially if you're going for a solid structure with no pawn past your 3rd rank (as some sicilian and caro setups do). You may fall behind in development temporarily, but white is too disorganized and far away to engineer a pawn break to punish you for it, so you catch back up.

But beginners already make lots of opening mistakes, so it's important to tell them the main idea of the open phase i.e. quick development, center control, and king safety. After they're more experienced they can learn the exceptions.

Lightly inebriated, with a little Coltrane on to set the mood.

In an OTB game roll around on the ground like a petulant child screaming and crying till your opponent agrees to wear a blindfold. Its easy to get an advantage at that point.

The best way to start a game is open your mind

For someone seeking help with choosing openings, I usually bring up Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro (2014).
http://kenilworthian.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-of-pete-tamburros-openings-for.html
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/openings-for-amateurs/
I believe that it is possible to see a fair portion of the beginning of Tamburro's book by going to the Mongoose Press site.
https://www.mongoosepress.com/catalog/excerpts/openings_amateurs.pdf
Perhaps Gauthamkp would also want to consider Discovering Chess Openings by GM John Emms (2006).
"... For beginning players, [Discovering Chess Openings] will offer an opportunity to start out on the right foot and really get a feel for what is happening on the board. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627114655/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen91.pdf
"There is no such thing as a 'best opening.' Each player should choose an opening that attracts him. Some players are looking for a gambit as White, others for Black gambits. Many players that are starting out (or have bad memories) want to avoid mainstream systems, others want dynamic openings, and others want calm positional pathways. It’s all about personal taste and personal need.
For example, if you feel you’re poor at tactics you can choose a quiet positional opening (trying to hide from your weakness and just play chess), or seek more dynamic openings that engender lots of tactics and sacrifices (this might lead to more losses but, over time, will improve your tactical skills and make you stronger)." - IM Jeremy Silman (January 28, 2016)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/opening-questions-and-a-dream-mate
https://www.chess.com/article/view/picking-the-correct-opening-repertoire
http://chess-teacher.com/best-chess-openings/
https://www.chess.com/blog/TigerLilov/build-your-opening-repertoire
https://www.chess.com/blog/CraiggoryC/how-to-build-an-opening-repertoire

"... A typical way of choosing an opening repertoire is to copy the openings used by a player one admires. ... However, what is good at world-championship level is not always the best choice at lower levels of play, and it is often a good idea to choose a 'model' who is nearer your own playing strength. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/learning-an-opening-to-memorize-or-understand
https://www.chess.com/article/view/3-ways-to-learn-new-openings
https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-understand-openings
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-perfect-opening-for-the-lazy-student
https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9035.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627110453/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen169.pdf
https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9029.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/has-the-king-s-indian-attack-been-forgotten
https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7277.pdf
https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9033.pdf
https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9050.pdf

https://www.chess.com/blog/IndreRe/book-review-vincent-moret-my-first-chess-opening-repertoire-for-black
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/vincent-moret/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627104938/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen159.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627022042/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen153.pdf

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7819.pdf

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7790.pdf

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7652.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627132508/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen173.pdf
"... Overall, I would advise most players to stick to a fairly limited range of openings, and not to worry about learning too much by heart. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)
"... Once you identify an opening you really like and wish to learn in more depth, then should you pick up a book on a particular opening or variation. Start with ones that explain the opening variations and are not just meant for advanced players. ..." - Dan Heisman (2001)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140626180930/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman06.pdf
"... To begin with, only study the main lines ... you can easily fill in the unusual lines later. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
"... I feel that the main reasons to buy an opening book are to give a good overview of the opening, and to explain general plans and ideas. ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
"... If the book contains illustrative games, it is worth playing these over first ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)
"... the average player only needs to know a limited amount about the openings he plays. Providing he understands the main aims of the opening, a few typical plans and a handful of basic variations, that is enough. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2008)
"... For inexperienced players, I think the model that bases opening discussions on more or less complete games that are fully annotated, though with a main focus on the opening and early middlegame, is the ideal. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2010)
"... Everyman Chess has started a new series aimed at those who want to understand the basics of an opening, i.e., the not-yet-so-strong players. ... I imagine [there] will be a long series based on the premise of bringing the basic ideas of an opening to the reader through plenty of introductory text, game annotations, hints, plans and much more. ..." - FM Carsten Hansen (2002)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627055734/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen38.pdf
"The way I suggest you study this book is to play through the main games once, relatively quickly, and then start playing the variation in actual games. Playing an opening in real games is of vital importance - without this kind of live practice it is impossible to get a 'feel' for the kind of game it leads to. There is time enough later for involvement with the details, after playing your games it is good to look up the line." - GM Nigel Davies (2005)

"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf

I am currently reading the How to open a chess game book and I agree that it is a great way to improve your game and understanding!