It is hard to be a liberal, secular city in India. One might claim to have an illustrious track record of producing a host of discerning litterateurs, artists and social reformers, but there will always be incidents of conservative backlash in a country proud of its"customs and traditions". Monday's case of toxic moral policing in the Kolkata Metro is one such incident.
A couple " standing too close" in the city's crowded public transport system were pushed out, punched and kicked. " Go to a club", "get a room", passengers allegedly shouted, in a city supposed to be culturally forward-thinking. Many are shocked that something as inconsequential as a couple staying close together in a packed train could elicit such a violent reaction in a city considered relatively more laidback and peace-loving.
Sanchit Sethi, whose startup StayUncle helps unmarried couples book hotel rooms in India, is not surprised. The hotel booking service, when it first launched two years ago, was the first of its kind to cater to a niche market of couples wary of vigilante groups and self-styled moral custodians, even though India does not have any law which prohibits unmarried couples from renting a room. Since the time they set up shop, they have partnered with 1,000 hotels across India willing to accept unmarried couples. By now, Sethi has a fairly reliable mental map of tolerant cities ready to offer hotel rooms to anxious couples.
Sethi says they do not work with "random Tom Dick or Harry hotels" or budget hotels which insist on a physical checklist of dos and donts. "For us, it is a very subjective checklist. What we try to understand before partnering with a hotel is how comfortable their staff is while accepting couples. We try to understand how they look at a couple. If they look at a couple in a special way, then it is a red alert for us. We are on the lookout for people who consider couples like any other category of guests who come to stay in their property. "
Headquartered in Delhi, StayUncle has the maximum number of hotels in the Delhi-NCR region, at 70. But, from a hotelier's point of view, the easiest city to convince was Mumbai. "The hotels in Mumbai are more open and don't have many biases towards couples and non-couples," says Sethi. What was surprising, even shocking to an extent, was how Bengaluru fared. "It is one heck of a conservative place. We thought it was a metro city. But it takes slightly more effort to get them on board there than in Delhi or Mumbai or even Chennai. Chennai is a better place. It's much easier there."
The other surprise was how Kolkata generates the highest demand. Sanchit says they get most number of queries at the customer support centre in Kolkata, although they have 25 properties there, 45 less than Delhi. "It's like people there really want something like this, but they are just not happy no matter how much we do, no matter how many hotels we bring. They just want more and more," says Sanchit.
What explains this disproportionate demand? "Kolkata, I think, is a city which has been very suppressed for a long long time. People are looking for something like this to grow. They just want freedom," reasons Sanchit.