Ask Mitali Roy to name her favourite hang-out place and she immediately pipes up, “HRC!” Really? Hard Rock Café, where the bill usually comes to about ₹1,800 per person — how many times has she been there? “Never,” says the 21-year-old Mumbaikar sheepishly then immediately defends herself. “But if I could, that’s where I would go every weekend.” That, in a nutshell, is how India’s young spend their evenings and weekends — they crowd in with their friends into places where the bill doesn’t tempt them to sell a kidney or call for an overdraft on their allowance but, really, they’re wishing they were somewhere a lot more trendy.