Room For Sex

With a cultish set of clients across 20 Indian cities, a w ebsite that offers premium hotel rooms for unmarried couples (minus the judgement) has become a curious community for the lovesick.

- Megha Shah

She took off her clothes within minutes of entering our room in a 4-star hotel, and attacked,” writes a 24-year-old Android developer from Kolkata in an email, describing his most prized sexual encounter. 

“She was the alpha, in control. We didn’t touch the bed but headed straight for the table which caused the mirror above to break,” his email continues. “The hotel was nice about the damage. She paid for it, and we were out in a few hours.” 

My correspondent, who calls himself “by some standards, a sex addict,” has booked hotels for sex 21 times in the last six months through a website called StayUncle.

It could have been an expensive hobby, except that StayUncle offers 4- and 5-star rooms on a 10-hour basis – 10am to 7pm, or 9pm to 8am – at 40 to 50 per cent of the regular tariff. 

“We often mistake moral law for the actual law in India,” says Blaze Arizanov, on a chilly evening in Delhi. We’re sitting in an outdoor café drinking tea and avoiding curious glances from passersby. Arizanov, who’s from Macedonia, and whose Instagram profile picture is of him wearing a T-shirt with the words “I’ve just helped my 100th customer have sex”, is eccentric looking. He has long, dirty blond hair pulled into a ponytail, and gangly limbs that betray his morning job of teaching yoga “to aunties and children” in parks across South Delhi. 

“There is absolutely no law which prevents unmarried couples from booking rooms in a hotel. Yet couples are subjected to humiliating questions by hotel staff or even outright refusals. And, in some of the shadier ones, raids by the police.” He shakes his head angrily.