Let not Page Three and Preity Zinta fool you: it's not the time to disco. The riotous era of teeny-boppers and twenty-somethings swinging their hips and shaking a leg to the Macarena is over. Disco is dead in India's metros. The nocturnal topography of India's swinging cities is unrecognisable from two years ago. Mumbai's Fire 'n' Ice and Mikanos and Delhi's Ghungroo and Someplace Else have all called it a night. Go back in time and there are even more: 1900s, Cyclone, Three Flights Up, RG's, Rock Around the Clock, Cavern, Xanadu and Cellar. It is pack-up time for many more, including Mumbai's Insomnia. The strobe lights have faded, the dance floor is desolate. And the partygoers have moved someplace else.

PICTURE SPEAK
MUMBAI VELOCITY: Only a few people visit this 15,000 sq ft nightclub	DELHI CAPITOL: Not very popular with the lounging types

The reasons are many. Unreasonable curfews have played havoc with nightclubs in Mumbai and Delhi. With the swish set stepping out only after 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, a 12.30 a.m. deadline (now extended to 1.30 a.m.) means nightclubs have a two-hour window to do business-not a profitable model by any stretch. And partygoers, who shell out Rs 1,000-1,500 as cover charge, are looking for a more economical deal.

The draconian deadline apart, there are just not enough night birds to power the business. Unlike megapolises like New York or London that can boast of a clubbing population of more than one lakh per night, Mumbai and Delhi have about 15,000 at best. Savvy entrepreneurs are quickly realising this. Except for JW Marriott, the latest five-star hotels in Mumbai have not invested in a nightclub.

Fire 'n' Ice, which was the biggest disco Mumbai had ever seen when it opened in 1999, shut down this year saying the location had become too family-centric. Mikanos also downed shutters this year and now loans itself for corporate events. The management at Taj is furiously exploring more profitable options to Insomnia. It was only in the late 1990s that Mumbai, the country's disco capital, was going all out to imitate the West and lofty industrial warehouses were being transformed into swank discos. And now it is all over.

"There is a definite shift in culture. People want to go out to eat and drink but dancing is not as hot as it was in the '90s," says Vikrant Chougule of Chateau Indage, the company that operates about a dozen nightspots in Mumbai, including Athena. Hectic 16-hour days and stress-inducing jobs mean the last thing people want on a night out is intrusive eardrum shattering music or flashy disco lights.

NIGHTSPOTS | BANGALORE, PUNE

Alive and Rocking   PICTURE SPEAK BANGALORE SPINN: Students unwind by dancing the night away While Mumbai and Delhi have moved on and adopted the lounge culture, Bangalore and Pune are still rocking to the disco beat in nightclubs like Spinn and Ola. Far from towns but not yet metros, the entertainment industry is yet to mature in these cities. More importantly, Bangalore and Pune have a sizeable student population looking for a release from the grind by dancing the night away. Easier deadlines have also worked in favour of nightclubs that remain open till about 4 a.m. And discos are not only open by night but during the day as well. But despite the rocking disco scene in Bangalore and Pune, there are definite signs of the lounge culture threatening to take over. After the success of F Bar, Bangalore is slated to have 22 new lounges by the end of this year and Pune already has the immensely popular and very upmarket Aqua Lounge and Leather Lounge. But with the 13,000 sq ft Athena opening at Bangalore's Leela Palace in September and Fire 'n' Ice (8,000 sq ft) launching in Pune there is no doubt that discos are still alive and kicking here.

If the '90s' refrain was "let's go dancing" the new decade is about "chilling out". "Even teeny-boppers are now into chilling out," says Sunny Sara of Mumbai's Red Light. "They want to do what the grown-ups are doing." The scene is no different in Delhi where lounges and bars like F Bar, Agni, Dublin and Shalom have poached nightclubs of their regular clientele. So much so that nobody wants to call their place a nightclub or disco anymore. "Call yourself anything else: lounge, bar, resto-bar," says Chougule.

For these are the spots night birds are exploring. They hop into a lounge for laidback music, a shisha bar for hookah and conversation, a music bar for live jazz, a resto-bar for culinary excellence, a sports bar for a few drinks, bites and the game and a pub for a nightcap. The little-bit-of-all scheme has worked well for places like Agni in Delhi and Indigo in Mumbai.

"Besides, we will never have the kind of clubbing culture the West has," says Luke Kenny of Channel V. Genre-specific discotheques playing house, trance and progressive trance have a cult following abroad but club-hoppers in India do not relate to music they can't sing along to. The stagnant global pop music scene has also spelled doom for international dance tracks in India's clubs. The monopoly of Bollywood tracks is the final nail in the coffin of the disco era. Stand-alone discos like Enigma in Mumbai and Mirage in Delhi are popular only because they stick to Bollywood remixes and the occasional hip-hop hit.

While Mumbai and Delhi have turned their noses up at tacky, booming nightclubs, disco has survived in Kolkata. The laidback metro moves to a different beat and is still catching up with the hipper metros in the country. Nightclubs like Tantra, Cloud 9 and Dublin are popular and lounges are yet to take over. "But there is a definite mellowing down in the party culture even in Kolkata," says Karan Paul of Park Hotels.

Nightclub owners are not completely disheartened though. They believe trends are cyclical: people will soon tire of hanging out at snooty lounge bars and dash to boogie through the night again. Others like Kenny disagree. "Stand-alone discos are like single-screen theatres," he says. In the multi-purpose, multiplex era their demise was only inevitable.

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