A testament to how ecstatic Nagpur is to finally have a McDonald’s is the outlet’s rating on Zomato. With a rating of 4.5, McDonald’s is in the top five restaurants in the city. When I went to check it out myself, there were queues that stretched beyond the floor, and why not? The tales we had heard from cousins in metropolitan cities seemed too fantastic to be true. With their eyes all starry and consumed with wonder (that can only be brought on by seeing Piri Piri fries made live and not just in an ad), they would speak dreamily of sitting on Ronald’s lap and attending birthday parties at McD’s special party rooms. A friend from Mumbai fondly recounted her fifth birthday party at a McDonald’s. Upon asking her what the return gift at her party was, she said “There were neither gifts, nor return gifts. No one wanted anything else because a Happy Meal was the only gift anyone needed,” she said. While this was what she went through a couple of decades ago, this wave of feeling like our city or town was finally cool and is progressing, is what smaller places in India are going through right now, as the fast food giant further penetrates into India.