Privacy can be hard to come by in India. Life is a communal swirl of relatives, neighbors and friends. Cities are crowded, and prying eyes are everywhere.

Enter Oyo, a popular hotel-booking platform. The company, backed by big names in venture capital, built a hip reputation as a gateway to “love hotels” for unmarried couples. Inside its budget rooms, young lovers who might otherwise be left to steal furtive kisses in the nooks and crannies of public parks or shopping malls could exert their passions behind closed doors.

Now, Oyo is stepping back from its image as a refuge for hookups. This month, it revised its policy guidelines to give some partner hotels the discretion to deny rooms to young couples unless they provide proof of marriage.

So far, the change applies only to Meerut, a midsize city northeast of New Delhi. The company said the new policy was a response to complaints by civil society groups and was formulated “in line with local social sensibilities.”

Oyo’s move spurred memes and a backlash on social media, especially among 20-somethings. To many, it drove home the tension between traditional values and modern ideals that defines life for millions of young Indians.

Premarital sex is still largely taboo in this deeply conservative country, where marriages are traditionally arranged by families. It is widely viewed as a malign import from the less-inhibited West, and as an affront to Indian culture that is either to be policed or left unacknowledged.

The stigma around sex before marriage is about “family honor,” said Chirodip Majumdar, an associate professor at Rabindra Mahavidyalaya, a college in the eastern state of West Bengal. Nonetheless, more young people are doing it anyway, studies show.

Attitudes about premarital sex vary along class lines, Mr. Majumdar said, with higher-income people viewing it more favorably. “They have more scope of social interactions, more knowledge about birth control mechanisms, more exposure to Western culture,” he said.

Many young Indians, too, have embraced liberal attitudes toward dating and sex that transcend caste, class and religion, which still often dictate arranged marriages.

Dating apps like Tinder are popular, as are hookups. A 2022 study published in the journal Sexuality & Culture found that 55 percent of young adults in four cities in India “engaged in hooking up, indicating that the norm regarding sexual behavior might be shifting.”

Neha, a 34-year-old counselor based in Bengaluru, said she and her husband rented Oyo rooms twice a week when they were dating. Neha, who asked that her last name not be used, recalled the judgmental glances that hotel owners, including those that did not use the Oyo platform, often directed her way.

At some hotels, the proprietors questioned their marital status before turning them away.

But Oyo became such a core part of their romance that when the couple got married in 2017, their animated video wedding invitation contained a reference to the hotel platform.

“Everyone knew we were using Oyo,” Neha said, adding, “So we put that in our wedding invite.”

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

It is not uncommon to see young lovers exchange stealthy kisses in nearly empty movie theaters or under the archways of abandoned monuments in the blazing heat of a Delhi summer. Bathroom stalls and fitting rooms are all fair game. Cybercafes can be a make-out zone.

In the acclaimed 2024 movie “All We Imagine as Light,” which explores the intersecting lives of three women in Mumbai, one of the characters finds a deserted patch of forest to have sex with her boyfriend.

Manforce, which bills itself as India’s best-selling condom brand, last year featured a series of humorous ads with couples getting it on in private corners of public spaces — a car, a park, a cinema.

Oyo was founded in 2013 and is backed by investment firms, including SoftBank. It expanded to the United States in 2019, and last year it bought the Motel 6 chain.

In India, it offers rooms for as little as 500 rupees, or less than $6, a night, no questions asked. The platform became popular with small-hotel owners, who by signing up with Oyo are required to abide by its standards and use its branding.

On Google, one of the first search questions for Oyo is “Can I stay in Oyo with my girlfriend?” Although Oyo also serves solo business travelers and other customers, the company leaned into its image, offering room searches under filters like “relationship mode.”

Now, however, it is pursuing more families.

In an ad released last year, a young couple sits at the dinner table with the woman’s family. Their marital status is unclear. After she tells her father that they have booked a weekend trip with Oyo, he looks at them, horrified.

When the couple says it is more fun with family, the father expresses confusion: “What are you talking about?” The next frame shows the entire family checking into a sparkling Oyo hotel. The father then says, “This is what you’re talking about!”

Pragati K.B. contributed reporting.

Late Sunday night, just hours before Donald J. Trump would be sworn in as America’s 47th president, his fans showed up ready to party in the president-elect’s honor.

Many arrived after 10 p.m. in black cars and vans that drove through the roads around the White House, which are otherwise closed to vehicle traffic ahead of the inauguration.

An earlier snowstorm had passed, but the temperatures remained frigid, with black ice covering the ground. The weather had already dashed the dreams of too many donors, who spent the weekend bothering Trump officials with the hopes of seeing the inauguration up-close at the Capitol Rotunda rather than being relegated to the suites of the Capital One Arena, no matter how much booze or food would be there.

Since Mr. Trump’s win in November, his supporters from Silicon Valley and beyond have opened their bank accounts to him. Inauguration weekend was no different, with donors spending millions for the opportunity to jump from ballrooms to yachts to rooftops with views of the White House for lavish events.

Billionaires seen around Washington over the weekend included Miriam Adelson, the casino magnate and widow of Sheldon Adelson; Paul Singer, the hedge fund titan who is among the most influential Republican donors in the country; Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, who spent days party-hopping as part of his attempt to win a place in Mr. Trump’s orbit; and Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google who eight years ago around this time was unexpectedly showing up at protests against Mr. Trump’s travel ban on some Muslim countries.

This year? He was unexpectedly showing up at Trump inauguration parties.

Inaugural weekends, after all, are a time-honored tradition for major donors who come to pay respects and make amends, with packages for a suite of events going for about $1 million. This year, the mood felt jubilant, with little of the unease of the last time Mr. Trump came to Washington when major corporations seemed nervous about the impacts of his administration.

The entire weekend had this Silicon Valley inflection, based on interviews and attendance at a half-dozen events. Tech companies hosted many of the biggest parties and drew assorted technorati.

At the Crypto Ball — a pro-Trump event hosted by the cryptocurrency industry, held Friday evening — Snoop Dogg performed Bob Marley’s hit “Everything’s Gonna Be All Right” for incoming administration officials from Silicon Valley and top cryptocurrency investors, some of whom, despite their wealth, waited in long lines in the cold to get inside the auditorium.

The same night, a block away, the town’s power players took center stage at a steakhouse in downtown Washington. Brian Ballard — one of the top lobbyists likely to cash in on the return to power — reveled in the adulation, fielding introductions to future clients.

The next night, Peter Thiel, once a close supporter of Mr. Trump’s, opened his mansion to figures including Mr. Zuckerberg, JD Vance, and Donald Trump Jr.

On Sunday afternoon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. braved an afternoon sleet storm to trek to The Ned, a member’s club in downtown Washington, not yet open, for a private party thrown by the co-hosts of the podcast “All-In,” a popular conservative podcast that explores tech, politics, and economics hosted by venture capitalists.

Many in Silicon Valley decided to close out the weekend on Sunday at a party hosted by X, Uber, and the Free Press, the online media company founded by the former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss.

Held at the Riggs Hotel, it felt full of the heady energy of a rehearsal dinner. Many of Mr. Kennedy’s seven adult children took over a back room where servers passed them trays of wine and security kept them away from prying eyes.

“There are a lot of us,” said Kyra Kennedy, his youngest daughter, who is a model and fashion designer in Milan. “It’s tough to get us all together in the same room, so this is really special.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Thiel, Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor picked by President-elect Trump to the be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Bret Baier, the Fox News anchor, roamed the main room flanked with marble columns and hanging chandeliers, finding friends in the crowds.

Other guests included Liz Truss, the former British prime minister; John Barrasso, the senator from Wyoming; Jacob Helberg, an incoming administration official; and Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami.

There was a full bar in addition to a separate martini bar. Servers passed around snacks like shrimp rolls and tuna rice cakes prepared by the Michelin-starred chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who has a restaurant in the Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The country star Dierks Bentley performed for the crowd, standing on the bar for an enthusiastic rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

“It was so good, so good,” said Conor McGregor, the U.F.C. boxer, who watched the performance. He was swarmed by fans all night, his popularity seemingly unscathed despite his being held liable for sexual assault in November and the fact that he is facing a new lawsuit.

Some guests arrived in black-tie attire, having come from a candlelight dinner hosted by Mr. Trump at the nearby National Building Museum (tickets started at $250,000) or the Turning Point Inaugural Ball at the Salamander Hotel, where the Village People performed. Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive of X, was wearing a gown inspired by vintage Dior made by a close friend’s son.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas arrived around 11:30 p.m., and Mr. Brin, the co-founder of Google, stopped by just after midnight.

Mr. Musk consumed much of the night’s attention with the constant speculation of whether he would show up at all at a party hosted by his own company. He did not, although several family members, including his mother, Maye, brother Kimbal, and his wealth manager, Jared Birchall, were in the crowd, as were several of his closest friends.

Joanna Coles, the chief content officer at the Daily Beast, said the weekend reminded her a little of a television show.

“All the characters left from the first season, and now we have a whole new plot of characters,” she said, adding: “And there are going to be plot twists.”