These rooms offer rare privacy to young Indian lovers. Resolve complaints.

Finding privacy in India can be difficult. Life is a collective rotation of relatives, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded, and beautiful eyes are everywhere.

Enter Oyo, a popular hotel booking platform. The company was backed by big names in venture capital and built a hip reputation as a gateway to “love hotels” for single couples. In the budget rooms, the young lovers who are left to steal sly kisses in the courtyards and courtyards of public parks or shopping malls can indulge their desires behind closed doors.

Now Oyo is retreating from its image as a haven for hackers. This month, some partner hotels revised their policy guidelines to deny rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.

So far, the change has only affected Meerut, a medium-sized city northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy was in response to complaints by civil unions and was designed “in line with local social sentiment”.

Oyo’s move sparked memories and reactions on social media, especially among 20-somethings. For many, it drove home the tension between traditional values ​​and modern ideals that defines life for millions of young Indians.

Premarital sex is still conservative in this country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. The less-inhibited West is seen as an evil import and as an affront to Indian culture, to be blocked or unacknowledged by the police.

Chirodeep Majumdar, associate professor at Rabindra Mahavidyalaya College in East Bengal state, said the stigma around premarital sex is “family honour”. However, more young people are doing it anyway, studies show.

Attitudes towards premarital sex vary by class, Mr Majumdar said, with higher income groups viewing it more favourably. “The greater the breadth of social interactions, the more knowledge about birth control methods, the more vulnerable they are to Western culture,” he said.

Many young Indians have also embraced liberal attitudes about dating and sexuality that transcend race, class and religion, which still dictate arranged marriages.

Dating apps like Tinder are popular, as are hookups. A 2022 study in the journal Sexuality and Culture found that 55 percent of young adults in four cities in India agree that “sexual norms are changing.”

Neha, a 34-year-old consultant in Bengaluru, said she and her husband used to rent Oyo rooms twice a week when they were dating. Neha, who requested anonymity, recalls the judgmental looks she was often directed at by hoteliers, including those who did not use the Oyo platform.

In some hotels, the owners questioned their marriage before returning to their marriage.

But Oyo became an integral part of their romance, and when the couple married in 2017, their animated video wedding invitation contained a reference to the hotel’s stage.

“Everyone knew we used Oyo,” said Neha, “so we put that on our wedding invitation.

The lack of private spaces to engage in communication in India created a market for companies like Oyo.

It is common to see young lovers exchanging subtle kisses in near-empty movie theaters or under abandoned monuments in the scorching sun of Delhi winters. Shower stalls and fitting rooms are all fair game. Cyber ​​cafes can be a make-up zone.

In the acclaimed 2024 film All We Think Like Light, which explores the interwoven lives of three women in Mumbai, one of the characters finds a forest patch in the desert to have sex with her lover.

Manforce, which bills itself as India’s condom brand, last year ran a series of funny ads featuring couples in public places in private corners — cars, parks, cinemas.

Oyo was founded in 2013 and is backed by investment firms including Softbank. In the year It expanded into the US in 2019, and last year bought the Motel 6 chain.

It offers rooms in India for 500 rupees or less than $6 a night, no questions asked. The platform has become popular among small hoteliers, who are required to register with OYO to comply with the standards and use the brand name.

On Google, one of the first search queries for Oyo is “Can I stay in Oyo with my girlfriend?” That is what it says. Although Oyo caters exclusively to business travelers and other customers, the company has moved closer to its image, offering room searches with filters such as “connection mode”.

But now it is haunting many families.

in Advertisement released last yearA young couple is sitting at the dinner table with the woman’s family. Their marital status is not clear. After she tells her father that they are planning a weekend trip with Oyo, he looks at them nervously.

When the couple said it was more fun with their family, the father expressed confusion: “What are you talking about?” The next frame shows the whole family checking into a glittering Oyo Hotel. And the father said, “That’s what you’re talking about!” it has.

Pragati K.B Contribution reporting.