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Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
In this pathbreaking work, Shrayana Bhattacharya maps the economic and personal trajectories--the jobs, desires, prayers, love affairs and rivalries--of a diverse group of women. Divided by class but united in fandom, they remain steadfast in their search for intimacy, independence and fun. Embracing Hindi film idol Shah Rukh Khan allows them a small respite from an oppressive culture, a fillip to their fantasies of a friendlier masculinity in Indian men. Most struggle to find the freedom-or income-to follow their favourite actor.
Bobbing along in this stream of multiple lives for more than a decade-from Manju's boredom in 'rurban' Rampur and Gold's anger at having to compete with Western women for male attention in Delhi's nightclubs, to Zahira's break from domestic abuse in Ahmedabad-Bhattacharya gleans the details on what Indian women think about men, money, movies, beauty, helplessness, agency and love. A most unusual and compelling book on the female gaze, this is the story of how women have experienced post-liberalization India.
Bobbing along in this stream of multiple lives for more than a decade-from Manju's boredom in 'rurban' Rampur and Gold's anger at having to compete with Western women for male attention in Delhi's nightclubs, to Zahira's break from domestic abuse in Ahmedabad-Bhattacharya gleans the details on what Indian women think about men, money, movies, beauty, helplessness, agency and love. A most unusual and compelling book on the female gaze, this is the story of how women have experienced post-liberalization India.
384 pages, Unknown Binding
First published November 11, 2021
716 people are currently reading
5048 people want to read
About the author
Shrayana Bhattacharya
3 books103 followersShrayana Bhattacharya is an Economist in the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labour unit for South Asia. Prior to joining the World Bank, she has worked on a range of issues in the areas of urban bureaucracy, social protection and informality. She is trained in development economics at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in the Indian Express, EPW and the Caravan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 414 reviews
January 17, 2022
Sociology, Sexism, Statistics and SRK. What's not to love?
June 29, 2023
Loved this brilliant commentry on gender inequality, slowly changing landscape for Indian women, social disparity, and how Shah Rukh Khan binds all these women together irrespective of their caste, class, and financial situation.
I have already recommended it to friends. 😃
I have already recommended it to friends. 😃
January 16, 2022
“A 2020 World Economic Forum report on gender gaps in economic participation and opportunity placed India in the bottom five countries of the world, with Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.”
This was a really moving, insightful and brilliant read that was difficult to put down and clearly one of the best books I have read.
If there was a book that you wouldn't want to judge based on the cover, this is that book. It isn’t really about Shah Rukh Khan or lonely women in the literal sense. At the core, this book is about Indian women’s desire to be treated with dignity and fairness and the grim reality faced by them. The book describes the lives of around ten diverse women of different ages including the author. The author came across them through her research work and kept in touch over 15 years. These include women living in one of the poorest areas in the world in Jharkhand jungles, Lutyens' Delhi and everything in between. Even though their lives may seem to have hardly any similarity from the outside, the issues they face are eerily similar. Like, one girl got slapped for watching a movie once, another was put under house arrest and some women had to work extra to watch a movie in secrecy. I used to watch a movie in the theater every Friday during my high school so this really hit home for me and showed how privileged childhood I had.
The writing of the book is mindblowing and makes it fun to read despite it covering a lot of dry statistics. The author amazingly connects the economic data with the personal stories and analyzes the forces shaping the personal lives through the lens of economics, history and some philosophy. All the characters in the book are so well written that I can clearly see a movie or a Netflix series based on this book. This book also reminded me of the movie ‘Lajja’ that deals with the same subject in a similar fashion.
The way the author connects movies to real life is quite impressive and her critique and analysis seemed better than professional critics. My impression of Shah Rukh in real life was that he is hard working and driven but a bit arrogant and wasn’t aware that he is a big feminist and treats all women in his life including new actresses exceptionally well. Like his movies credit the actress before the actor and he still knocks on his wife and daughter to respect their privacy.
The best aspect of the book is that it is honest and the author doesn’t let her strong opinions come in the way of giving out the full picture. The author confronts people on their opinions and also questions poor choices in life including her own. Also, the author doesn’t shy from covering women who are happy in marriage or whose views on work after marriage differs from the author.
The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was the elaborate coverage of Shah Rukh movies in the beginning and some related discussion in the end. Some women in the book are expecting a person similar to Shah Rukh in their life who is handsome, intelligent, high status, emotionally expressive, can understand them yet kind and loyal. As the book mentions, this is not possible. This seemed to dilute the book’s message but it was probably important to cover this to stay honest.
If you are interested in developmental economics, feminism or movies, you would love this book and will learn a lot about the other topics.
This was a really moving, insightful and brilliant read that was difficult to put down and clearly one of the best books I have read.
If there was a book that you wouldn't want to judge based on the cover, this is that book. It isn’t really about Shah Rukh Khan or lonely women in the literal sense. At the core, this book is about Indian women’s desire to be treated with dignity and fairness and the grim reality faced by them. The book describes the lives of around ten diverse women of different ages including the author. The author came across them through her research work and kept in touch over 15 years. These include women living in one of the poorest areas in the world in Jharkhand jungles, Lutyens' Delhi and everything in between. Even though their lives may seem to have hardly any similarity from the outside, the issues they face are eerily similar. Like, one girl got slapped for watching a movie once, another was put under house arrest and some women had to work extra to watch a movie in secrecy. I used to watch a movie in the theater every Friday during my high school so this really hit home for me and showed how privileged childhood I had.
The writing of the book is mindblowing and makes it fun to read despite it covering a lot of dry statistics. The author amazingly connects the economic data with the personal stories and analyzes the forces shaping the personal lives through the lens of economics, history and some philosophy. All the characters in the book are so well written that I can clearly see a movie or a Netflix series based on this book. This book also reminded me of the movie ‘Lajja’ that deals with the same subject in a similar fashion.
The way the author connects movies to real life is quite impressive and her critique and analysis seemed better than professional critics. My impression of Shah Rukh in real life was that he is hard working and driven but a bit arrogant and wasn’t aware that he is a big feminist and treats all women in his life including new actresses exceptionally well. Like his movies credit the actress before the actor and he still knocks on his wife and daughter to respect their privacy.
The best aspect of the book is that it is honest and the author doesn’t let her strong opinions come in the way of giving out the full picture. The author confronts people on their opinions and also questions poor choices in life including her own. Also, the author doesn’t shy from covering women who are happy in marriage or whose views on work after marriage differs from the author.
The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was the elaborate coverage of Shah Rukh movies in the beginning and some related discussion in the end. Some women in the book are expecting a person similar to Shah Rukh in their life who is handsome, intelligent, high status, emotionally expressive, can understand them yet kind and loyal. As the book mentions, this is not possible. This seemed to dilute the book’s message but it was probably important to cover this to stay honest.
If you are interested in developmental economics, feminism or movies, you would love this book and will learn a lot about the other topics.
December 26, 2021
This author is a magician, a brilliant book.
PS: Matters of public policy are super important, but the issues get buried once it's published. You might not read such papers unless you're a researcher on that topic. This book deals with gender disparity, migration, income gap and many more important social issues. All diverging from a common interest - SRK.
PS 2: It's fifteen years of research. You can find reference of major events till pandemic. Kochi Biennale, too (I am biased).
PS 3: A great guide for anyone in public policy / advocacy / health research on how to translate data that connects to people, and tell important stories.
PS: Matters of public policy are super important, but the issues get buried once it's published. You might not read such papers unless you're a researcher on that topic. This book deals with gender disparity, migration, income gap and many more important social issues. All diverging from a common interest - SRK.
PS 2: It's fifteen years of research. You can find reference of major events till pandemic. Kochi Biennale, too (I am biased).
PS 3: A great guide for anyone in public policy / advocacy / health research on how to translate data that connects to people, and tell important stories.
December 2, 2021
If you’re a feminist and a Shah Rukh fan, you should really give this book a read! I’ve always loved SRK’s films and it was wonderful to read this brilliant book about how this one actor has changed the way Indian women perceive love and romance in their own lives.
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh by Shrayana Bhattacharya is not about SRK, the actor. It is about the romantic expectations and lived romantic realities of millions of Indian women who grew up watching and being influenced by Shah Rukh Khan’s films and even his interviews. It talks about how the “myth” of Shah Rukh made these women expect a more expressive, romantic and sentimental partner who would treat them like equals. It also celebrates the many women who took inspiration from SRK’s rise from an ordinary, middle-class Delhi boy to the King of Bollywood and worked to create a great career for themselves, becoming much more independent than their mothers had been.
This book was super educational. It made me aware of just how far we still need to go when it comes to giving Indian women a better quality of life as well as equal opportunity - and also treating them as more than just “wives” or “mothers”. Despite being filled with statistics and survey data, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh never has a dull page. The numbers only reel you into the book further.
Bhattacharya narrates the individual stories of a number of SRK fangirls, all of whom are relatable in their own ways. But my favourite among these characters was the Accountant. Choosing to prioritise her education, freely pursuing romantic and sexual relationships and resisting the pressure to get married just for the sake of it, she revolts against the Indian patriarchy. The fact that she puts her own independence first and refuses to conform really inspired me. She didn’t just see SRK as the epitome of her romantic fantasy but also her idol, remembering his quotes in every difficult situation in her life and finding inspiration in his life and persona.
Feminist or not, you will take away a lot from this book, I’m sure! Cannot recommend this enough.
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh by Shrayana Bhattacharya is not about SRK, the actor. It is about the romantic expectations and lived romantic realities of millions of Indian women who grew up watching and being influenced by Shah Rukh Khan’s films and even his interviews. It talks about how the “myth” of Shah Rukh made these women expect a more expressive, romantic and sentimental partner who would treat them like equals. It also celebrates the many women who took inspiration from SRK’s rise from an ordinary, middle-class Delhi boy to the King of Bollywood and worked to create a great career for themselves, becoming much more independent than their mothers had been.
This book was super educational. It made me aware of just how far we still need to go when it comes to giving Indian women a better quality of life as well as equal opportunity - and also treating them as more than just “wives” or “mothers”. Despite being filled with statistics and survey data, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh never has a dull page. The numbers only reel you into the book further.
Bhattacharya narrates the individual stories of a number of SRK fangirls, all of whom are relatable in their own ways. But my favourite among these characters was the Accountant. Choosing to prioritise her education, freely pursuing romantic and sexual relationships and resisting the pressure to get married just for the sake of it, she revolts against the Indian patriarchy. The fact that she puts her own independence first and refuses to conform really inspired me. She didn’t just see SRK as the epitome of her romantic fantasy but also her idol, remembering his quotes in every difficult situation in her life and finding inspiration in his life and persona.
Feminist or not, you will take away a lot from this book, I’m sure! Cannot recommend this enough.
March 18, 2022
This book is a diligently made cocktail blending economics, feminism, love and SRK; a cocktail striving to yield the after taste of hope.
Spanning across different classes and cultures, Shrayana Bhattacharya’s observation of SRK fans (especially women) becomes the narrative with which she dives into the Indian female psyche. Paralleling the nuances of womanhood with economic concepts is even more striking because she neatly correlates some often misunderstood qualitative concepts with hardcore logic and rationale. Her research and statistical evidence of the state of women both in their personal and professional lives is jarring. I understand her need for championing SRK as a metaphor to draw attention to a bigger picture, but the fangirling was a touch too much for my taste. However, this book with its quirky yet fresh take on (Indian) feminism is a must-read.
Spanning across different classes and cultures, Shrayana Bhattacharya’s observation of SRK fans (especially women) becomes the narrative with which she dives into the Indian female psyche. Paralleling the nuances of womanhood with economic concepts is even more striking because she neatly correlates some often misunderstood qualitative concepts with hardcore logic and rationale. Her research and statistical evidence of the state of women both in their personal and professional lives is jarring. I understand her need for championing SRK as a metaphor to draw attention to a bigger picture, but the fangirling was a touch too much for my taste. However, this book with its quirky yet fresh take on (Indian) feminism is a must-read.
December 19, 2023
"For much of my adult life as a working professional, I thought I was collecting stories about how women see Shah Rukh Khan and his films. In fact, I was collecting narratives of how they saw themselves and those around them. Because none of us know Shah Rukh, and none of us hope to; fantasies are not meant to be tarnished by reality. We made him up and he happily participated in the myth we had created."
I knew narratives are a powerful way to make sense of the societal condition. But how powerful, I did not realise, till I read Shrayana putting together her work for over a decade to show a mirror to the society we live in that has normalised inequality of women. Through stories of women from different strata of the economy in North, linked by their fandom of Shah Rukh, the book tries to present a case backed by supporting data, on the insufficiency of the women empowerment reforms that have happened since 1990s.
Shah rukh khan's early roles in Hindi cinema as the boy next door or the anti-hero with a lot of shades of gray is far from the ideal man. How these women perceived him better than their boyfriends/marriages tells the state of the men. SRK became a metaphor for longing and wishing this would change. The romantic element of DDLJ and KKHH and DTPH gave women an ideal man who helped in the kitchen, was vulnerable and would go to any extent for love. Indian men, job markets and society was not catching up at the same pace resulting in marginalisation that continues till this day.
The stats around the dialogues for women in movies or the employment gap across different categories of society with affirmative action gives you points to think. Towards the end, after discussing the stories of the women, the author almost rants nonstop with data and on arguments people would make to say things aren't all bad but they really are. The book however does not try to structure a solution or recommendations - not that it is necessary, just would have made it more potent.
One unintended point that disproves the hypothesis of SRK is that he did two high adrenaline macho films this year which limited women to side characters. Maybe he became a projection and hopefully men brought up on SRK end up being better than the heroes of the earlier generation.
A commendable book for it's achievement and effort.
I knew narratives are a powerful way to make sense of the societal condition. But how powerful, I did not realise, till I read Shrayana putting together her work for over a decade to show a mirror to the society we live in that has normalised inequality of women. Through stories of women from different strata of the economy in North, linked by their fandom of Shah Rukh, the book tries to present a case backed by supporting data, on the insufficiency of the women empowerment reforms that have happened since 1990s.
Shah rukh khan's early roles in Hindi cinema as the boy next door or the anti-hero with a lot of shades of gray is far from the ideal man. How these women perceived him better than their boyfriends/marriages tells the state of the men. SRK became a metaphor for longing and wishing this would change. The romantic element of DDLJ and KKHH and DTPH gave women an ideal man who helped in the kitchen, was vulnerable and would go to any extent for love. Indian men, job markets and society was not catching up at the same pace resulting in marginalisation that continues till this day.
The stats around the dialogues for women in movies or the employment gap across different categories of society with affirmative action gives you points to think. Towards the end, after discussing the stories of the women, the author almost rants nonstop with data and on arguments people would make to say things aren't all bad but they really are. The book however does not try to structure a solution or recommendations - not that it is necessary, just would have made it more potent.
One unintended point that disproves the hypothesis of SRK is that he did two high adrenaline macho films this year which limited women to side characters. Maybe he became a projection and hopefully men brought up on SRK end up being better than the heroes of the earlier generation.
A commendable book for it's achievement and effort.
September 6, 2024
This is an important book; I think every Indian should read it. It offers an unfiltered, honest look into the lives of Indian women across the socio-economic spectrum, and shows how starkly they differ from the lives of Indian men at every level. This is backed up with data.
It's also an innovative book; using the women's shared fandom of SRK to show how they are similar and how they differ adds a lot of colour. And it seems like it made the author's interaction with the women a lot more personal and revelatory.
But I cannot give it more than 3/5, because I think it's just too long. 100 pages too long. I wish it had gone through much crisper editing - there's a lot of repetition, unnecessarily big and fancy words, and much drooling over SRK (this feels like the author justifying her own fandom--it would have been more powerful if she was just unapologetic about it). For a book fueled by concrete examples, there are one too many paragraphs of dry abstractions that made my eyes glaze over. It took me 5 months to read because of all this.
If we could get a revised edition cut down to 3/4th the length, without some of the fluff, I'd recommend it without hesitation.
It's also an innovative book; using the women's shared fandom of SRK to show how they are similar and how they differ adds a lot of colour. And it seems like it made the author's interaction with the women a lot more personal and revelatory.
But I cannot give it more than 3/5, because I think it's just too long. 100 pages too long. I wish it had gone through much crisper editing - there's a lot of repetition, unnecessarily big and fancy words, and much drooling over SRK (this feels like the author justifying her own fandom--it would have been more powerful if she was just unapologetic about it). For a book fueled by concrete examples, there are one too many paragraphs of dry abstractions that made my eyes glaze over. It took me 5 months to read because of all this.
If we could get a revised edition cut down to 3/4th the length, without some of the fluff, I'd recommend it without hesitation.
February 15, 2022
I am not a Shah Rukh Khan fan, so though the cover was attractive enough, I didn't even think of picking this book up. Then I heard someone talk of the basic premise of the book- of how it used the Sisterhood of SRK fandom to speak of woman's issues, and wanted to read it. And I was hooked.
The book is about the intersectionality of power and patriarchy. Of how age and gender in different measures determine family dynamics. Of how despite the rise in level of education, the participation of women in the workplace is going down. Of how women are used to living under constant surveillance from their family. Of how some women rebel, but most negotiate compromises and broker peace. Above all, it is about the greatest fantasy of a woman- a man who will appreciate them for being them.
I love numbers, so this book appealed. I would be interested to know if someone who doesn't enjoy numbers as much as I do relates to it similarly.
The book is about the intersectionality of power and patriarchy. Of how age and gender in different measures determine family dynamics. Of how despite the rise in level of education, the participation of women in the workplace is going down. Of how women are used to living under constant surveillance from their family. Of how some women rebel, but most negotiate compromises and broker peace. Above all, it is about the greatest fantasy of a woman- a man who will appreciate them for being them.
I love numbers, so this book appealed. I would be interested to know if someone who doesn't enjoy numbers as much as I do relates to it similarly.
Read
April 9, 2022I enjoyed how the author brings life worlds and stories of very diverse women to make it evident how lonely it is for women in India to carve a space for themselves, to work, to be autonomous and to be free. And her portrayal of the role SRK plays, an actor who speaks to women with “izzat, pyaar and dhyaan” unlike the men in their lives.
What I did not quite like is the sprinkling of caste here and there without any analysis of brahminical patriarchy or systems of oppression that women face because of caste. The author is also critical of radical expressions of feminist resistance because majority of Indian women don’t subscribe to it. The future she paints with reliance on icons like SRK seems bleak, while Shahrukh may help in coping with daily life injustices, it is only through adopting Babasaheb and other anti-caste icons en-masse that we can imagine moving towards a more equal society.
What I did not quite like is the sprinkling of caste here and there without any analysis of brahminical patriarchy or systems of oppression that women face because of caste. The author is also critical of radical expressions of feminist resistance because majority of Indian women don’t subscribe to it. The future she paints with reliance on icons like SRK seems bleak, while Shahrukh may help in coping with daily life injustices, it is only through adopting Babasaheb and other anti-caste icons en-masse that we can imagine moving towards a more equal society.
April 7, 2023
If you do not have any other interesting book to read, pick up this book to read something different. Not a book I would necessarily recommend. Most parts couldn’t hold my interest. Feels like there’s more of telling than sharing.
June 10, 2022
(3.5 STARS)
Back in 2002 or 2003, my father had purchased a Compaq computer. It was obscenely expensive and had all the latest additions. My father thought he was investing in my future; little did he know that I would use that computer to watch Main Hoon Na about a gazillion times.
Since then Shah Rukh Khan has been an indelible part of my life and I have been obsessed with him. I wouldn’t say that it had anything to do with attraction, mainly because I was like, seven years old. All I knew is that this man was kind and witty and valued hard work. It was the self-deprecating humour that drew me to him as I was fascinated by how a man of his stature could be so humble and down-to-earth. I remember fangirl-ing over him throughout my school years with my then best friend, and standing up for him if anyone had a mean word to say.
So when it came to a book that venerated SRK and talked about gender inequality in the country, I couldn’t wait to grab it. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh is interesting, to say the least. It navigates through the oppression that women face on the daily, across all castes and classes and religions, and presents to the reader very real stories and numbers that show us that nothing has really changed since the days of Independence when it comes to women empowerment. The only thread that binds the women in Bhattacharya’s story is the societal and familial subjugation that the women, and their love for Shah Rukh.
Bhattacharya, primarily being an economist working on various social development projects, has used her love (obsession?) for SRK to tell the story of the struggles faced by a few women she has come across in her personal life as well as during her research assignments. She has used statistics to cement the fact that the social inequality between men and women in India remains stark, and she is vocal in her perception that feminism is not a radical movement intended to “smash the patriarchy”, but a movement that requires the collective (and more often than not, tangibly invisible) effort that chips away at patriarchy slowly and steadily. This is a point I disagree with because I think both forms of feminism are important for any discernible change; we need the loudmouths as well as the quiet ones, and feminism cannot favour one form of rebellion over the other.
The book delves into how Indian social mores curb the independence of women, thereby robbing them of the opportunity to experience love in its entirety without being hindered by the way society dictates how love should be constructed. This is where the idea of Shah Rukh appeals to most of these women because most of his movies portray a love that is between equals and "allow" the woman to carve her own space and identity outside of her relationship with an(y) adult man. All the women in this book yearn for a chance to be who they are, and for a partner who is not threatened by their desires, needs and wants. Shah Rukh, as he is in movies and as is he showcased to the world by his PR agency, presents an ideal partner to these women who are not even provided with a choice to love who they want.
I think the book is incredibly well-written and it’s an utterly fascinating idea to present the gendered strife in the country through the prism of one’s love for Shah Rukh Khan. My only grievance would be that the structure of the narrative is very haphazard and the writing (though poetic at times) can be a bit inaccessible. It is also interspersed with a lot of anger and frustration that Bhattacharya herself feels about the way things are, and that, therefore, dents the credibility of the book and instead makes it come off as a personal rant in a journal (apologies for the lack of a better word, I understand the underlying sexism that runs through this word). If that was her intention, then I join her in her anger. But if you wish to look at this book a bit seriously, then it ends up derailing the reader from the point that is being made - that things are bad and things will continue to be bad.
Either way, it was a great read and I learnt a lot, I would say. There were some instances that Bhattacharya brought out that truly made me pause and think, and isn't that what reading is all about? She is truly a terrific writer, and I cannot wait to see what more she has to present to us.
Back in 2002 or 2003, my father had purchased a Compaq computer. It was obscenely expensive and had all the latest additions. My father thought he was investing in my future; little did he know that I would use that computer to watch Main Hoon Na about a gazillion times.
Since then Shah Rukh Khan has been an indelible part of my life and I have been obsessed with him. I wouldn’t say that it had anything to do with attraction, mainly because I was like, seven years old. All I knew is that this man was kind and witty and valued hard work. It was the self-deprecating humour that drew me to him as I was fascinated by how a man of his stature could be so humble and down-to-earth. I remember fangirl-ing over him throughout my school years with my then best friend, and standing up for him if anyone had a mean word to say.
So when it came to a book that venerated SRK and talked about gender inequality in the country, I couldn’t wait to grab it. Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh is interesting, to say the least. It navigates through the oppression that women face on the daily, across all castes and classes and religions, and presents to the reader very real stories and numbers that show us that nothing has really changed since the days of Independence when it comes to women empowerment. The only thread that binds the women in Bhattacharya’s story is the societal and familial subjugation that the women, and their love for Shah Rukh.
Bhattacharya, primarily being an economist working on various social development projects, has used her love (obsession?) for SRK to tell the story of the struggles faced by a few women she has come across in her personal life as well as during her research assignments. She has used statistics to cement the fact that the social inequality between men and women in India remains stark, and she is vocal in her perception that feminism is not a radical movement intended to “smash the patriarchy”, but a movement that requires the collective (and more often than not, tangibly invisible) effort that chips away at patriarchy slowly and steadily. This is a point I disagree with because I think both forms of feminism are important for any discernible change; we need the loudmouths as well as the quiet ones, and feminism cannot favour one form of rebellion over the other.
The book delves into how Indian social mores curb the independence of women, thereby robbing them of the opportunity to experience love in its entirety without being hindered by the way society dictates how love should be constructed. This is where the idea of Shah Rukh appeals to most of these women because most of his movies portray a love that is between equals and "allow" the woman to carve her own space and identity outside of her relationship with an(y) adult man. All the women in this book yearn for a chance to be who they are, and for a partner who is not threatened by their desires, needs and wants. Shah Rukh, as he is in movies and as is he showcased to the world by his PR agency, presents an ideal partner to these women who are not even provided with a choice to love who they want.
I think the book is incredibly well-written and it’s an utterly fascinating idea to present the gendered strife in the country through the prism of one’s love for Shah Rukh Khan. My only grievance would be that the structure of the narrative is very haphazard and the writing (though poetic at times) can be a bit inaccessible. It is also interspersed with a lot of anger and frustration that Bhattacharya herself feels about the way things are, and that, therefore, dents the credibility of the book and instead makes it come off as a personal rant in a journal (apologies for the lack of a better word, I understand the underlying sexism that runs through this word). If that was her intention, then I join her in her anger. But if you wish to look at this book a bit seriously, then it ends up derailing the reader from the point that is being made - that things are bad and things will continue to be bad.
Either way, it was a great read and I learnt a lot, I would say. There were some instances that Bhattacharya brought out that truly made me pause and think, and isn't that what reading is all about? She is truly a terrific writer, and I cannot wait to see what more she has to present to us.
March 20, 2022
The facts and figures were very interesting!
Parts of the book were very engaging but it felt forcefully linked to Shah Rukh. Not particularly being a fan, it wasn't easy to get through so I approximately only finished about two-thirds of it.
It does lead to a good book club discussion though!
Parts of the book were very engaging but it felt forcefully linked to Shah Rukh. Not particularly being a fan, it wasn't easy to get through so I approximately only finished about two-thirds of it.
It does lead to a good book club discussion though!
April 10, 2022
Such an interesting and insightful mix of feminism, statistics and super star fandom. No wonder it is on the bestseller charts!
May 13, 2024
Now that I have finished reading this book, I can say that Shrayana Bhattacharya has tried her hardest to speak about something pretty hard to encapsulate in 400 pages. I can see how it can be very informative to many people. This book just wasn’t for me, however.
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh Khan, as many here have pointed out, is a clickbait title. The book introduces its readers to Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan and explains how his cinema choices created what the author (and Shah Rukh himself) calls The Myth of Shah Rukh.
This actor has played many roles as a romantic lead. Bhattacharya points out that his romantic roles are different from the roles of all other romantic stars of the time because they prioritise women. He often portrayed a man capable of emotional delicateness and with the ability to see women’s dreams, desires, and selfhood as valid. One of my favourite observations that Bhattacharya makes is that Shah Rukh’s movies show him speaking to women. When it comes down to it, it’s hilarious how this is so incredibly rare in the South Asian films of those days (and today too, I suppose).
The book pulls you in with a promise of talking about Shah Rukh but then becomes a free-flowing meditation on women living in India. To be more precise, it promises you a character sketch of the “love life” of Indian women but gives you instead a character sketch of women’s survival in this country. All this is important. But I struggled to finish the book.
To truly connect with this book, you have to be:
1) A die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan. If you are someone who sees him as a good actor and simply appreciates him for treating his colleagues and the women around him with respect, it may not be enough to truly connect. You need to be a fan . You need to have grown up near idolising him and going to his movies for comfort in times of distress.
2) Born in the 80s.
3) North Indian, specifically, from Delhi.
I don’t fall into any of these criteria. I was born in the late 90s. For the most part, I have grown up idolising female stars in South Asian cinema, and if I did like a male star, they would mostly not be Indian. (To Bhattacharya’s credit, she does talk about this shift a bit towards the end.) And to complete the circle, I am as South Indian as it gets.
So well, this book was not for me. But I am struggling to understand who this book is for. The people who know what it is like to live as a woman in India would not exactly gain anything new from this book. We know it, we have lived this life. Our Shah Rukh posters (or Deepika Padukone posters, if that’s more your drift) were considered a ridiculous distraction from a woman’s true destiny in life – Marriage. The men who don’t understand this are not going to pick up this book, oh no. I suppose, in a meta way, that’s what this book is desperately screaming about – how the men who don’t care will perhaps never learn to care.
What alienated me from this otherwise strong message was the writing style. There is just way too many statistics and way too much data. Bhattacharya works in the field of economics. She cites many, many studies and adds them to the stories she tells of the different women from the different economic strata in India. But the data is never explained. It never truly touches your heart because of its placement in the book. It gives us the feeling that there is some insight to be found. But it is hard to find because it only vaguely connects to the lived experiences of these women.
Bhattacharya acknowledges this in the final chapters. She writes,
However, this acknowledgement comes too late and it isn’t enough somehow. We wait the entire duration of the book to have someone unravel for us what statistics mean in a country as diverse as India, only to be left with what we already knew: Statistics cannot measure us.
Further, her tone is difficult to get used to. The first few and the last few chapters of the book are very well written, giving us a sociological perspective of the power of cinema and the status of women in the subcontinent. But everything in between feels jumbled. The stories of the women feel very meandering, and they started draining my energy after a bit. This is again because of the placement of the chapters – we needed her acknowledgement of the role of statistics before we delved into the stories. For what it’s worth though, Bhattacharya comes across as an extremely sincere person in her writing, trying, in her own flawed way, to keep her privilege in check.
The book does conclude with some excellent points. Shah Rukh Khan and an honest study of the role his songs and movies play get lost in the midst of a lot of data. However, there are moments of sudden clarity where the author makes seemingly intuitional but extremely intelligent observations.
The book is also an ode to fandom culture. In its meandering way, it reminds us that women, especially teenage girls, with their ability to love them deeply, can either make or break a celebrity’s career. We are never given credit for it, but women and girls create culture through their fangirling. On the surface, fangirling looks like obsession and idolising. But it is the one safe space where women truly speak.
As Bhattacharya points out, it is where they finally get to express their sexuality and desire instead of being the object of desire. And that is revolutionary. The book does brush upon how loving a celebrity is often an outlet to ask for what you deserve, an outlet to announce that you exist and have wants, desires, and thoughts just like everyone else. This thought can topple patriarchal structures. Something as simple as fangirling brings equity where it doesn’t exist.
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh Khan, as many here have pointed out, is a clickbait title. The book introduces its readers to Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan and explains how his cinema choices created what the author (and Shah Rukh himself) calls The Myth of Shah Rukh.
This actor has played many roles as a romantic lead. Bhattacharya points out that his romantic roles are different from the roles of all other romantic stars of the time because they prioritise women. He often portrayed a man capable of emotional delicateness and with the ability to see women’s dreams, desires, and selfhood as valid. One of my favourite observations that Bhattacharya makes is that Shah Rukh’s movies show him speaking to women. When it comes down to it, it’s hilarious how this is so incredibly rare in the South Asian films of those days (and today too, I suppose).
The book pulls you in with a promise of talking about Shah Rukh but then becomes a free-flowing meditation on women living in India. To be more precise, it promises you a character sketch of the “love life” of Indian women but gives you instead a character sketch of women’s survival in this country. All this is important. But I struggled to finish the book.
To truly connect with this book, you have to be:
1) A die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan. If you are someone who sees him as a good actor and simply appreciates him for treating his colleagues and the women around him with respect, it may not be enough to truly connect. You need to be a fan . You need to have grown up near idolising him and going to his movies for comfort in times of distress.
2) Born in the 80s.
3) North Indian, specifically, from Delhi.
I don’t fall into any of these criteria. I was born in the late 90s. For the most part, I have grown up idolising female stars in South Asian cinema, and if I did like a male star, they would mostly not be Indian. (To Bhattacharya’s credit, she does talk about this shift a bit towards the end.) And to complete the circle, I am as South Indian as it gets.
So well, this book was not for me. But I am struggling to understand who this book is for. The people who know what it is like to live as a woman in India would not exactly gain anything new from this book. We know it, we have lived this life. Our Shah Rukh posters (or Deepika Padukone posters, if that’s more your drift) were considered a ridiculous distraction from a woman’s true destiny in life – Marriage. The men who don’t understand this are not going to pick up this book, oh no. I suppose, in a meta way, that’s what this book is desperately screaming about – how the men who don’t care will perhaps never learn to care.
What alienated me from this otherwise strong message was the writing style. There is just way too many statistics and way too much data. Bhattacharya works in the field of economics. She cites many, many studies and adds them to the stories she tells of the different women from the different economic strata in India. But the data is never explained. It never truly touches your heart because of its placement in the book. It gives us the feeling that there is some insight to be found. But it is hard to find because it only vaguely connects to the lived experiences of these women.
Bhattacharya acknowledges this in the final chapters. She writes,
When I asked fan-women about how they saw the ‘status of women,’ none used laws or statistics to explain themselves. They articulated the quality of their lives through the quality of their relationships and the quality of food offered to their children. It seems as if the latter had improved while the former was in rapid decline.
However, this acknowledgement comes too late and it isn’t enough somehow. We wait the entire duration of the book to have someone unravel for us what statistics mean in a country as diverse as India, only to be left with what we already knew: Statistics cannot measure us.
Further, her tone is difficult to get used to. The first few and the last few chapters of the book are very well written, giving us a sociological perspective of the power of cinema and the status of women in the subcontinent. But everything in between feels jumbled. The stories of the women feel very meandering, and they started draining my energy after a bit. This is again because of the placement of the chapters – we needed her acknowledgement of the role of statistics before we delved into the stories. For what it’s worth though, Bhattacharya comes across as an extremely sincere person in her writing, trying, in her own flawed way, to keep her privilege in check.
The book does conclude with some excellent points. Shah Rukh Khan and an honest study of the role his songs and movies play get lost in the midst of a lot of data. However, there are moments of sudden clarity where the author makes seemingly intuitional but extremely intelligent observations.
I thought I was collecting stories about how women see Shah Rukh Khan and his films. In fact, I was collecting narratives of how they saw themselves and those around them. Because none of us know Shah Rukh, and none of us hope to; fantasies are not meant to be tarnished by reality. We made him up and he happily participated in the myth we had created. In imagining Shah Rukh, the women I encountered tried to imagine an alternative to the masculine worlds they occupied.
The book is also an ode to fandom culture. In its meandering way, it reminds us that women, especially teenage girls, with their ability to love them deeply, can either make or break a celebrity’s career. We are never given credit for it, but women and girls create culture through their fangirling. On the surface, fangirling looks like obsession and idolising. But it is the one safe space where women truly speak.
As Bhattacharya points out, it is where they finally get to express their sexuality and desire instead of being the object of desire. And that is revolutionary. The book does brush upon how loving a celebrity is often an outlet to ask for what you deserve, an outlet to announce that you exist and have wants, desires, and thoughts just like everyone else. This thought can topple patriarchal structures. Something as simple as fangirling brings equity where it doesn’t exist.
Over the years, I came to understand that the actor in question, possibly due to my own obsession, was simply happenstance. Worker-fangirls such as Manju started using selected sections of his cinema and imagery as an entry point into traversing trickier terrain—talking about their unrequited expectations of reciprocity from men in spaces of marriage, money and intimacy, and challenging the predetermined trajectories of their lives.
June 22, 2022
In “Desperately seeking Shah Rukh”, development economist Shrayana Bhattacharya, crafts an intelligent narrative about the general state of affairs of women in India, through the lens of fandom. A time series graph at the beginning of the book, showing participation of {rural vs. urban} :: {men vs. women} in the Indian labour force, through a series of Shah Rukh’s film releases in nearly three decades, blew my mind. It showed the declining trend of both rural and urban women’s participation over the years, counterintuitive to the narrative sold to us in mainstream media. Through the course of the book, Shrayana takes us through her journey across many states in Northern India, conducting surveys to collect data, which is then used by sociologists, economists in Governmental and Non-governmental organizations, to understand the ground realities of people’s lives and livelihoods - based on which policy changes can (eventually) be made. One of the icebreaker questions that she asked women that she was surveying was about films and their favourite actor. As an ardent Shah Rukh fan herself, she found it intriguing that he clearly emerged as a favourite among women while the likes of actors displaying more masculinity on screen were favourites among men. In addition to her research and analysis in development economics, Shrayana continued to pursue Shah Rukh’s fan following over many years in casual everyday encounters - comprising women belonging to various classes and social strata of the Indian society. Why was Shah Rukh adored by female fans across India, including women of different generations? What is so special about him? What is the current plight of women in India - in terms of independence in all aspects of life? What do their interactions with their most intimate circle tell us? Are their expectations of equality (if any) met? How does Shah Rukh play a role in all this?! Read Shrayana’s book to find out!
One of my earliest memories of engaging with Shah Rukh’s films/ songs is singing “Do dil mil rahe hain” out loud in the living room with my mom when I was 7. And perhaps dancing to “I love my India” from “Pardes” as a group with my fellow third graders for a school programme (I remember I was made to dress as a boy because of my boy cut hairstyle). All of Shah Rukh’s famous movie examples that Shrayana pointed to in the book (from around 95 - early 2000s), I remember watching and enjoying - “Yes boss”, “Pardes”, “DDLJ”, “Kuch kuch hota hai”, “Dil se”, “Swades”, “Chak De India” to name a few. Through all these movies, I remember being a fan of Shah Rukh before the 2010s when many of his movies started bombing in the box office. It was interesting to see the correlation that Shrayana drew in the shift in the types of characters he played, from portraying vulnerability to exhibiting masculinity. After a streak of flops, his screen presence in “Dear Zindagi” was a breath of fresh air, it was the Shah Rukh I could relate to…
I hadn’t (still haven’t) watched a lot of interviews of Shah Rukh as mentioned in the book. It would be interesting to watch these now, keeping the perspectives delved into, in the book.
A couple of questions came to my mind: I wonder if Shrayana encountered in her time in the US (or) thought about investigating the lives of Indian women immigrants living abroad throughout the world - is the situation of this group any different from their counterparts living in India? It’s a fair assumption to make that equality embraces their lives relatively better - how much so?
I also wonder if Shah Rukh read this book… :) It would be interesting to know his take after seeing tangible proof of how he has indulged women in daydreaming…
All in all, the book is a must-read. It was eye-opening in ways I couldn’t fathom. Never did I imagine I would be reading a book about economics, through people’s (in particular women’s) lived experiences and their fan following. A note of appreciation to this new author for also touching upon the role of contemporary female actors in Hindi cinema - in how they are breaking the glass ceiling and inspiring young women.
Thanks to Shrayana for penning this creative (non-) fiction. Truly illuminating!
One of my earliest memories of engaging with Shah Rukh’s films/ songs is singing “Do dil mil rahe hain” out loud in the living room with my mom when I was 7. And perhaps dancing to “I love my India” from “Pardes” as a group with my fellow third graders for a school programme (I remember I was made to dress as a boy because of my boy cut hairstyle). All of Shah Rukh’s famous movie examples that Shrayana pointed to in the book (from around 95 - early 2000s), I remember watching and enjoying - “Yes boss”, “Pardes”, “DDLJ”, “Kuch kuch hota hai”, “Dil se”, “Swades”, “Chak De India” to name a few. Through all these movies, I remember being a fan of Shah Rukh before the 2010s when many of his movies started bombing in the box office. It was interesting to see the correlation that Shrayana drew in the shift in the types of characters he played, from portraying vulnerability to exhibiting masculinity. After a streak of flops, his screen presence in “Dear Zindagi” was a breath of fresh air, it was the Shah Rukh I could relate to…
I hadn’t (still haven’t) watched a lot of interviews of Shah Rukh as mentioned in the book. It would be interesting to watch these now, keeping the perspectives delved into, in the book.
A couple of questions came to my mind: I wonder if Shrayana encountered in her time in the US (or) thought about investigating the lives of Indian women immigrants living abroad throughout the world - is the situation of this group any different from their counterparts living in India? It’s a fair assumption to make that equality embraces their lives relatively better - how much so?
I also wonder if Shah Rukh read this book… :) It would be interesting to know his take after seeing tangible proof of how he has indulged women in daydreaming…
All in all, the book is a must-read. It was eye-opening in ways I couldn’t fathom. Never did I imagine I would be reading a book about economics, through people’s (in particular women’s) lived experiences and their fan following. A note of appreciation to this new author for also touching upon the role of contemporary female actors in Hindi cinema - in how they are breaking the glass ceiling and inspiring young women.
Thanks to Shrayana for penning this creative (non-) fiction. Truly illuminating!
June 18, 2022
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Sardi, khaasi na malaria hua. Main gaya yaaron mujhko love love love loveria hua.
(I don't have a cold, cough or malaria. I have love love loveria.)
-Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman ,1992 (Raju Became a Gentleman, movie released in 1992)
How do you tell a movie obsessed nation stories? Via one of the biggest movie industries in the world that make films in Hindi, known as Bollywood.
The subject matter is that of the economic condition of the women spread across the North Indian belt of the country, where Hindi films are viewed in abundance, and it talks about their hopes, dreams, romantic life and their economic stand in the socio-economic pyramid while catering to the needs of the society (and the misogyny) around them.
The book is divided into four sections - Fantasies, Baazigar (Gambler), Work From Home, Mannat (SRK's palatial home at Bandra, Mumbai) - which explore the popularity of the actor and how it has impacted the lives of many women across India from the urban and rural setup. The constant message that these women come across through experiences is that the character on the screen that Shah Rukh portrays cannot match their husbands or partners, these women are constantly belittled and told that you will only come across such chivalrous men on the big screen, never in real life, and have to live in the overly romantic hope that Bollywood has given them.
For much of my adult life as a working professional, I thought I was collecting stories about how women see Shah Rukh Khan and his films. In fact, I was collecting narratives of how they saw themselves and those around them. Because none of us know Shah Rukh, and none of us hope to; fantasies are not meant to be tarnished by reality. We made him up and he happily participated in the myth we had created. In imagining Shah Rukh, the women I encountered tried to imagine an alternative to the masculine worlds they occupied. They forged, out of the gossamer fabric of their hopes and dreams, a man who would support freedom and choice for women whether to work, rest or watch movies. This imaginary world, with its teary-eyed men who wholeheartedly love women with wide open arms, may not be radical, but it is a challenge to the world we currently occupy, in which so many women feel unappreciated, unsafe and unloved.
The book explores so many aspects of the Indian economy and women's rights, but it still gives me couple of points to complain about. The first one being that it only concentrated on Delhi, Mumbai and certain rural areas like Rampur and towns like Jaisalmer - in fact there was no mention of any fan from the South of India although the author did interact with a few. The second one being the story of The One, I just felt really nauseous and put off reading it. Otherwise, I recommend this!
In Conclusion
The way you teach India economics is via Bollywood and especially Shah Rukh Khan.
Sardi, khaasi na malaria hua. Main gaya yaaron mujhko love love love loveria hua.
(I don't have a cold, cough or malaria. I have love love loveria.)
-Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman ,1992 (Raju Became a Gentleman, movie released in 1992)
How do you tell a movie obsessed nation stories? Via one of the biggest movie industries in the world that make films in Hindi, known as Bollywood.
The subject matter is that of the economic condition of the women spread across the North Indian belt of the country, where Hindi films are viewed in abundance, and it talks about their hopes, dreams, romantic life and their economic stand in the socio-economic pyramid while catering to the needs of the society (and the misogyny) around them.
The book is divided into four sections - Fantasies, Baazigar (Gambler), Work From Home, Mannat (SRK's palatial home at Bandra, Mumbai) - which explore the popularity of the actor and how it has impacted the lives of many women across India from the urban and rural setup. The constant message that these women come across through experiences is that the character on the screen that Shah Rukh portrays cannot match their husbands or partners, these women are constantly belittled and told that you will only come across such chivalrous men on the big screen, never in real life, and have to live in the overly romantic hope that Bollywood has given them.
For much of my adult life as a working professional, I thought I was collecting stories about how women see Shah Rukh Khan and his films. In fact, I was collecting narratives of how they saw themselves and those around them. Because none of us know Shah Rukh, and none of us hope to; fantasies are not meant to be tarnished by reality. We made him up and he happily participated in the myth we had created. In imagining Shah Rukh, the women I encountered tried to imagine an alternative to the masculine worlds they occupied. They forged, out of the gossamer fabric of their hopes and dreams, a man who would support freedom and choice for women whether to work, rest or watch movies. This imaginary world, with its teary-eyed men who wholeheartedly love women with wide open arms, may not be radical, but it is a challenge to the world we currently occupy, in which so many women feel unappreciated, unsafe and unloved.
The book explores so many aspects of the Indian economy and women's rights, but it still gives me couple of points to complain about. The first one being that it only concentrated on Delhi, Mumbai and certain rural areas like Rampur and towns like Jaisalmer - in fact there was no mention of any fan from the South of India although the author did interact with a few. The second one being the story of The One, I just felt really nauseous and put off reading it. Otherwise, I recommend this!
In Conclusion
The way you teach India economics is via Bollywood and especially Shah Rukh Khan.
September 3, 2024
It took me a while to get into this book because I am not a big SRK fan and the first chapter is all just praises for the superstar of our times. But once I got into it, I enjoyed the in-depth stories of women from varied classes, sections, employments, regions and ages across India. These stories capture the everyday struggles and small joys of women that form but are lost in dry statistical aggregates.The personal stories are well supplemented with bigger picture statistics without ever seeming like a read through numbers and graphs which a lot of development economics books tend to become. It seemed odd that an economist kept asking her survey subjects why they liked SRK but slowly she builds how every time someone turns to their hero, what they are missing and desiring in their lives.
While the starting of the book wasn't as strong, the ending captured the essence of changing times well. That patriarchy isn't going to change with a blow of a hammer but with relentless chipping away in intimate spaces and relationships. Would highly recommend the book for getting a realistic picture of women's lived experiences from all walks of life and, better understand and question how things are changing for them.
While the starting of the book wasn't as strong, the ending captured the essence of changing times well. That patriarchy isn't going to change with a blow of a hammer but with relentless chipping away in intimate spaces and relationships. Would highly recommend the book for getting a realistic picture of women's lived experiences from all walks of life and, better understand and question how things are changing for them.
May 4, 2023
3.5 stars
July 6, 2023
A deeply involved ethnographic investigation into the forlornly domestic and the continually-needing-to-be rebellious professional lives of Indian women across social class. Through personal stories of women, collected painstakingly over years, the author paints a picture of the modern Indian women, drawing a stark contrast to the liberated representations available to the mostly-urban and the mostly-online. Shah Rukh Khan is but a means to the story telling, chosen astutely by the author.
I found the latter half to be more compelling both in writing and in content.
I found the latter half to be more compelling both in writing and in content.
Read
August 28, 2023
SUPERIOR VIRTUE OF THE OPRESSED (SEX)
A long and tiring mishmash, this book could have very well been three separate books. However, the authoress decided to combine her professional expertise and her personal passion to create this Frankenstein. I wish to tackle each of the three entangled layers separately.
Seeking Shah Rukh Khan
As a eulogy of the actor's filmography and public persona, this layer is supposed to be the backbone of the whole volume. Although complete in itself, it only amounts to a fancy dress on the body of the narrative. The adulation for SRK seems unreal at points with characters reverting to watching his movies and interviews in situations where it would be the most unlikely thing to do. Now I'm not sure how different people cope with what life throws at them. But SRK as the common strain among women of such diverse backgrounds was thematically forced in my opinion.
Presenting SRK as the centerpiece of what women expect from relationships does set the stage for the other delusional takes in this book. One of them is that on-screen SRK is the ideal lover/ husband/ son. An ideal man. Women across the country (the world perhaps) want nothing "more" than that. And that this desire for a "good" man such as SRK is not too much. Basically, why are there no good men? Where are all the real-life SRKs of the world? And other such miserable musings accompanied with short recaps of the plots of his films, lyrics of the songs that he is in on-screen and plenty of quotations from his interviews.
I must submit that the book does handle him as a persona and not a person per se. But that distinction is lost when SRK's intelligent utterances are presented as proclamations of a prophet. This cult of Shah Rukh reminded me of a conversation I had in college years ago. A batchmate, who was devout, accused the rest of us non-practicing infidels of relying on "Bollywood" for our sense of right and wrong. His claim was that he had a moral compass powered by the edicts of God, revealed to his prophet. The rest of us God-less, were left scrounging for whatever fad was thrown up by popular culture as the way to live our lives. Of course, I don't agree with his position. But over the years I have come to realize that the majority of people get their hopes, dreams and ideals from movies. SRK is the epitome of the feminist man that all common-sensed women want. And this humble desire for a "good" man remains unmet. There is no real-life SRK. But that is no reason to not aim for the moon. The ideal is this man who plays Rahul/ Raj or some other cliched chocolate-boy in Bollywood rom-com musicals. This is what is missing in women’s life. The book does explain the cause behind this “simple” desire and the reason why it remains unfulfilled…
Brief Interviews with Desperate Women
I will not negate the lived experiences of the women whose interviews were the source of the personas created for the study behind this book. But traversing their life stories reveal the extreme prejudice with which the cases were selected. All the women interviewed are virtuous first and foremost. All of them have been wronged by the patriarchy. Care has been taken to represent women of diverse backgrounds: region, religion, caste and class. However, presenting these individuals as victims of the same evil force, induces a doubt in my mind. The placement of rural women of poorer backgrounds, who are by far the majority in our country, after the rich urban socialites further exasperate my suspicions about the cluelessness of the flag-bearers of feminism.
I fail to understand how the inability of a stewardess, who lives by herself in NCR and is free to see whomever she wants, to find a husband of her choice is akin to the very real limitations and restrictions in the life of a barely educated young muslim woman from the rural hinterlands. How is it that the author is able to present these as two cases of the evil of a common structural inequality? The commonality, in addition to their genders, is their firm belief that they deserve better. But is that not what many men feel as well? How is this dissatisfaction unique to women? It just is. And the authoress blames men for it.
I know that it is not my place to point out the obvious privilege of the women in the cities. But it is apparent to me that heartbreaking inequalities faced by a broad strata of human beings is being harvested by a narrow but well-positioned segment of people sharing the same gender. I hate to take this conspiratorial tone, but this whole book is an exercise in conspiracy. And it holds out well because of all the data…
Injustice in India: Statistically Speaking
Human life thrives upon multiple planes. Among the myriad classifications, I will stick to the socio-cultural & politico-economic planes. An individual lives on a completely different plane: that of their own. Each of these planes is separate but intimately connected. They feed and feed-off each other. Think of how a society is nothing but a bunch of people organized in different ways. Some might argue, there is no society but only the individual. Others might say that there is just the society and no individuals. But the reality is that both exist. Just on different planes.
A macro-assessment might present a picture fully confirming the experiences of the micro-constituents. But that does not imply any directionality. The lived experience of an individual is what composes the statistical measures presented in this book. The facts and figures do not dictate the lives of people. They remain in two different planes. Intimately connected but separate. However, it is easy to fall into a belief that one’s life is limited by these statistical measures. That all the misfortune was destiny after all. Look at the numbers if you have any doubts!
I am upset with the sophistry of the author of this volume. She writes of heartbreak. Being unlucky in love. Loneliness and longing. These are faced by all people. Women and men. But this book presents them as uniquely female predicaments by attaching statistical figures showing massive inequality between the sexes in our country. So what we have are real unjust happenings followed by a litany of survey results attempting to reinforce that this injustice is universal. Through the cases of the women in this book, women are presented to be pitiable as a class. All women are justifiably sad. All women share this sadness imposed by the patriarchy. No matter that the difference in circumstances is immense. They share the gender and hence they share the tortures of society.
I understand that the authoress did not find in life the love she was looking for. She feels used and abused. But in no way her misfortune is equal to those of the women she writes in the book. Treating them as the same in the name of feminism is unfair. I find myself confused as to how I feel about her. Am I supposed to feel bad for her? Because the best I can do is envy her.
Full Disclosure
It was excruciating to read this book as it paints all women as martyrs and absolves them of any misgivings. It blames the patriarchy for 100% of the inconveniences and humiliations suffered by women. The authoress is candid in writing about her own love life. But even here she paints herself as a victim. All her lovers, chosen by none other but herself, are presented as tormentors. Repeatedly, the idea that all women want is a “good” man is forwarded. Someone like Shah Rukh. Is it too much to ask? In my experience, that is far from the truth. Everyone, women and men, wants what’s best. Often times they expect something too good to be real. Everyone, women and men, believes they deserve better. They want what they can’t have. They don’t want what they have. This is the reality of life. The life that each one of us lives. But not on the socio-cultural or politico-economic plane. No matter how strongly we might feel about the forces at play at that scale, we must live our lives on our own plane.
This book was the book of the month last month of a book club that I am a part of. This particular club is dominated by liberal arts college brats (mostly women). I do not, usually, pick such kinds of books anymore. But I firmly believe that a steady diet of only those ideas that I agree with (and hence like) will make me intellectually obese. So I decided to read it. It took two months but here you go. No offense to obese people. And most importantly no offense to liberal arts college brats.
A long and tiring mishmash, this book could have very well been three separate books. However, the authoress decided to combine her professional expertise and her personal passion to create this Frankenstein. I wish to tackle each of the three entangled layers separately.
Seeking Shah Rukh Khan
As a eulogy of the actor's filmography and public persona, this layer is supposed to be the backbone of the whole volume. Although complete in itself, it only amounts to a fancy dress on the body of the narrative. The adulation for SRK seems unreal at points with characters reverting to watching his movies and interviews in situations where it would be the most unlikely thing to do. Now I'm not sure how different people cope with what life throws at them. But SRK as the common strain among women of such diverse backgrounds was thematically forced in my opinion.
Presenting SRK as the centerpiece of what women expect from relationships does set the stage for the other delusional takes in this book. One of them is that on-screen SRK is the ideal lover/ husband/ son. An ideal man. Women across the country (the world perhaps) want nothing "more" than that. And that this desire for a "good" man such as SRK is not too much. Basically, why are there no good men? Where are all the real-life SRKs of the world? And other such miserable musings accompanied with short recaps of the plots of his films, lyrics of the songs that he is in on-screen and plenty of quotations from his interviews.
I must submit that the book does handle him as a persona and not a person per se. But that distinction is lost when SRK's intelligent utterances are presented as proclamations of a prophet. This cult of Shah Rukh reminded me of a conversation I had in college years ago. A batchmate, who was devout, accused the rest of us non-practicing infidels of relying on "Bollywood" for our sense of right and wrong. His claim was that he had a moral compass powered by the edicts of God, revealed to his prophet. The rest of us God-less, were left scrounging for whatever fad was thrown up by popular culture as the way to live our lives. Of course, I don't agree with his position. But over the years I have come to realize that the majority of people get their hopes, dreams and ideals from movies. SRK is the epitome of the feminist man that all common-sensed women want. And this humble desire for a "good" man remains unmet. There is no real-life SRK. But that is no reason to not aim for the moon. The ideal is this man who plays Rahul/ Raj or some other cliched chocolate-boy in Bollywood rom-com musicals. This is what is missing in women’s life. The book does explain the cause behind this “simple” desire and the reason why it remains unfulfilled…
Brief Interviews with Desperate Women
I will not negate the lived experiences of the women whose interviews were the source of the personas created for the study behind this book. But traversing their life stories reveal the extreme prejudice with which the cases were selected. All the women interviewed are virtuous first and foremost. All of them have been wronged by the patriarchy. Care has been taken to represent women of diverse backgrounds: region, religion, caste and class. However, presenting these individuals as victims of the same evil force, induces a doubt in my mind. The placement of rural women of poorer backgrounds, who are by far the majority in our country, after the rich urban socialites further exasperate my suspicions about the cluelessness of the flag-bearers of feminism.
I fail to understand how the inability of a stewardess, who lives by herself in NCR and is free to see whomever she wants, to find a husband of her choice is akin to the very real limitations and restrictions in the life of a barely educated young muslim woman from the rural hinterlands. How is it that the author is able to present these as two cases of the evil of a common structural inequality? The commonality, in addition to their genders, is their firm belief that they deserve better. But is that not what many men feel as well? How is this dissatisfaction unique to women? It just is. And the authoress blames men for it.
I know that it is not my place to point out the obvious privilege of the women in the cities. But it is apparent to me that heartbreaking inequalities faced by a broad strata of human beings is being harvested by a narrow but well-positioned segment of people sharing the same gender. I hate to take this conspiratorial tone, but this whole book is an exercise in conspiracy. And it holds out well because of all the data…
Injustice in India: Statistically Speaking
Human life thrives upon multiple planes. Among the myriad classifications, I will stick to the socio-cultural & politico-economic planes. An individual lives on a completely different plane: that of their own. Each of these planes is separate but intimately connected. They feed and feed-off each other. Think of how a society is nothing but a bunch of people organized in different ways. Some might argue, there is no society but only the individual. Others might say that there is just the society and no individuals. But the reality is that both exist. Just on different planes.
A macro-assessment might present a picture fully confirming the experiences of the micro-constituents. But that does not imply any directionality. The lived experience of an individual is what composes the statistical measures presented in this book. The facts and figures do not dictate the lives of people. They remain in two different planes. Intimately connected but separate. However, it is easy to fall into a belief that one’s life is limited by these statistical measures. That all the misfortune was destiny after all. Look at the numbers if you have any doubts!
I am upset with the sophistry of the author of this volume. She writes of heartbreak. Being unlucky in love. Loneliness and longing. These are faced by all people. Women and men. But this book presents them as uniquely female predicaments by attaching statistical figures showing massive inequality between the sexes in our country. So what we have are real unjust happenings followed by a litany of survey results attempting to reinforce that this injustice is universal. Through the cases of the women in this book, women are presented to be pitiable as a class. All women are justifiably sad. All women share this sadness imposed by the patriarchy. No matter that the difference in circumstances is immense. They share the gender and hence they share the tortures of society.
I understand that the authoress did not find in life the love she was looking for. She feels used and abused. But in no way her misfortune is equal to those of the women she writes in the book. Treating them as the same in the name of feminism is unfair. I find myself confused as to how I feel about her. Am I supposed to feel bad for her? Because the best I can do is envy her.
Full Disclosure
It was excruciating to read this book as it paints all women as martyrs and absolves them of any misgivings. It blames the patriarchy for 100% of the inconveniences and humiliations suffered by women. The authoress is candid in writing about her own love life. But even here she paints herself as a victim. All her lovers, chosen by none other but herself, are presented as tormentors. Repeatedly, the idea that all women want is a “good” man is forwarded. Someone like Shah Rukh. Is it too much to ask? In my experience, that is far from the truth. Everyone, women and men, wants what’s best. Often times they expect something too good to be real. Everyone, women and men, believes they deserve better. They want what they can’t have. They don’t want what they have. This is the reality of life. The life that each one of us lives. But not on the socio-cultural or politico-economic plane. No matter how strongly we might feel about the forces at play at that scale, we must live our lives on our own plane.
This book was the book of the month last month of a book club that I am a part of. This particular club is dominated by liberal arts college brats (mostly women). I do not, usually, pick such kinds of books anymore. But I firmly believe that a steady diet of only those ideas that I agree with (and hence like) will make me intellectually obese. So I decided to read it. It took two months but here you go. No offense to obese people. And most importantly no offense to liberal arts college brats.
February 22, 2024
I’ve decided to ignore all the stats and conclude that only SRK can fix what ails the nation.
June 22, 2023
Took me a long time to finish but I didn't give up because it was still somewhat relatable, somewhat interesting, and reflected the south asian, especially India and Nepal's, economy and reality. Loved SRK's movies synopsis and references. Would recommend.
February 21, 2022
The title could be misleading for some who come across this book. Desperately Seeking Shahrukh may sound like a book aimed at exalting the actor's virtues, or a celebration of his achievement. This it precisely is not. It is the celebration of the women's fandom for the said actor.
A travelogue of fandom is what best describes it. The author takes you on a journey across the various spectrum of class and caste chronicling the stories of women from posh mansions in Lutyen's Delhi, to tiny hovels in remote villages in Western Uttar Pradesh and hillocks of Jharkhand. The book is a sociological study of the private lives of women in a country that despite all its progress and globalization prefers to shackle women in the homes rather than interact with the world outside. The only unifying factor for all of them is their love and appreciation for Shahrukh.
The book never tries to do a character study of the actor or his life. It has no interest about his real self, the book explores the MYTH that is Shahrukh Khan that is created on the screens. For some he symbolizes the triumph of a middle class man in an industry dominated by insider connections. For some, it is the gentler masculinity on display, while for others he is the route for sheer escapism from a dour domestic life of servitude. The book ends with a barrage of statistical data proving the horrendously unequal status of men and women in this country. Despite ending on an absolute grim note, the author leaves you with a tiny spark of hope like the SRK dialogue from Om Shanti Om: Like our Hindi films, everything in life will one day be okay. If it isn't, then...
A travelogue of fandom is what best describes it. The author takes you on a journey across the various spectrum of class and caste chronicling the stories of women from posh mansions in Lutyen's Delhi, to tiny hovels in remote villages in Western Uttar Pradesh and hillocks of Jharkhand. The book is a sociological study of the private lives of women in a country that despite all its progress and globalization prefers to shackle women in the homes rather than interact with the world outside. The only unifying factor for all of them is their love and appreciation for Shahrukh.
The book never tries to do a character study of the actor or his life. It has no interest about his real self, the book explores the MYTH that is Shahrukh Khan that is created on the screens. For some he symbolizes the triumph of a middle class man in an industry dominated by insider connections. For some, it is the gentler masculinity on display, while for others he is the route for sheer escapism from a dour domestic life of servitude. The book ends with a barrage of statistical data proving the horrendously unequal status of men and women in this country. Despite ending on an absolute grim note, the author leaves you with a tiny spark of hope like the SRK dialogue from Om Shanti Om: Like our Hindi films, everything in life will one day be okay. If it isn't, then...
January 26, 2022
Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh is an all-encompassing take on the female experience in India.
Every story is an illustration of how women's social location (age, class, religion, rural/urban setting etc.) determines their ability to dream, hope, negotiate identity and independence in modern day India.
A big takeaway? Change-making feminism isn't about one big grand conflict or social media friendly statements. Societal boundaries are pushed through thankless, minute everyday interactions in the hope of finding brief personal fulfilment or something more radical like- personal enjoyment. Fighting limitations is about chipping away slowly (as opposed to 'smashing') patriarchal strictures.
Growing up on a diet of western feminist takes, its wonderful to 'feel seen' in a book rooted in the average Indian experience.
Also who doesn't love reflective pieces on the joys of SRK :P
Every story is an illustration of how women's social location (age, class, religion, rural/urban setting etc.) determines their ability to dream, hope, negotiate identity and independence in modern day India.
A big takeaway? Change-making feminism isn't about one big grand conflict or social media friendly statements. Societal boundaries are pushed through thankless, minute everyday interactions in the hope of finding brief personal fulfilment or something more radical like- personal enjoyment. Fighting limitations is about chipping away slowly (as opposed to 'smashing') patriarchal strictures.
Growing up on a diet of western feminist takes, its wonderful to 'feel seen' in a book rooted in the average Indian experience.
Also who doesn't love reflective pieces on the joys of SRK :P
June 29, 2022
Going by the title of the book I was sceptical at first, but this has turned out to be the best book I've read this year.
This book is a reflection of the realities of the lives of Indian women represented through stories and statistics. Away from the glossy feminist idols of social media, this book focuses on the everyday lives of women who strike daily bargains against patriarchy for their right to live, laugh, love and work. And sometimes, what unites these women, is their love for Shah Rukh Khan and the kind of intimacy he represents.
This book is a reflection of the realities of the lives of Indian women represented through stories and statistics. Away from the glossy feminist idols of social media, this book focuses on the everyday lives of women who strike daily bargains against patriarchy for their right to live, laugh, love and work. And sometimes, what unites these women, is their love for Shah Rukh Khan and the kind of intimacy he represents.
July 30, 2023
I'm delighted that I finished this book, and I'm eager to reread it while using a pencil to underline all the fantastic aspects. There are numerous wonderful things worth noting.
The book's intrigue lies in its exploration of love and intimacy among Indian women from various socio-economic backgrounds, all while putting Shahrukh fandom at the core. It's absolutely captivating! I never expected to enjoy a book with such volume and statistics, but the writer's presentation made it truly wonderful ❤️
The book's intrigue lies in its exploration of love and intimacy among Indian women from various socio-economic backgrounds, all while putting Shahrukh fandom at the core. It's absolutely captivating! I never expected to enjoy a book with such volume and statistics, but the writer's presentation made it truly wonderful ❤️
August 10, 2022
Brilliantly feminist, nostalgic, saddening, and the first book in the sociology/economics domain that I've ever willingly read without falling asleep. (Okay, maybe I did fall asleep sometimes, but loved the book nevertheless)
October 20, 2023
Let me start by saying that this is the first "feminist" book I've read. Obviously that doesn't mean I'm not familiar with the movement and its principal ideas; but I had always approached them with the cynicism, misunderstanding and half-hearted brackishness endemic to my gender.
Concurrently, and perhaps concomitantly, I have not had a lot of success with women in the marketplace of romance, dating and relationships for most of my life. This had become an all-consuming, burning fire of self-pity and hate that my well-meaning friends begun to try to help me with by turning me over to the writers and online gurus of the "meninist/ladist" movements. The sigma hustle grindset peddlers. The church of Jordan Peterson. YouTube videos where "libs" and feminists get "owned" or "destroyed".
While I am not going to discredit their claims or theories and deny the very real fact that the edicts of this modern day pop philosophy phenomenon have helped a lot of men find peace and contentment in their lives; I could just never identify with a lot of them, especially when it came to matters of women. Because while women may not have had been partners, women had often been lab partners, colleagues, friends and family.
Every time I hover around this subject, my brain always revisits in varying degrees of intensity a particular incident at work a few years ago. This was on my first job, the start of my independent life and all the confusions that come with it. A boring afternoon had given way to an uninspired conversation about relationships. One of the people I worked with, older than me by a few years, was immodestly proud of how successful he was with the opposite sex and would not miss any opportunity to dispense advice. And as a 23 year old timid engineering student who was clueless about women, I would be all ears to hear tales from the other side.
What stood out about this particular conversation and the reason why it is the only one I remember is that my manager, a tall stoic man who I don't recollect participating in these post-lunch insipidities much, was proclaiming loudly with great belief in his heart and ballast in his lungs that "Ek ladka aur ek ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte/ a man and a woman can never be friends". A female colleague and I were good friends, and this little Mohnish Behl impression gave way to a few very tense seconds of silence, until the gloating colleague broke it by jumping onto some other story from his seemingly endless anthology of sexual conquests. In hindsight, my manager, a staunch Jat born and raised on a farm in Haryana, with a brother in the army and a wife that was always at home, probably did not approve of our friendship very much if at all, so this must have been a simpering festering thought in his brain for a while which he eventually found the courage and opportunity to breathe into the world. Anyway, the discord that I felt then, with the statement and my lived reality, is emblematic of how I felt when I consumed aforementioned media.
My principal complaint with these books and these YouTube videos and these jingoisms is that they always assume a hypothetical woman, a platonic ideal whose thoughts and ideas are replicated by women in reality. All women behave the same way. All women react the same way. If women like you, find you attractive and want to sleep with you, it's going to be all of them or none of them. Women have no agency, no free-will, they are a hivemind tasked with deciding which man's genealogy continues and which man's doesn't. Women who are supposed to be by nature caring and loving. Women are submissive. Women follow the alpha.
I couldn't disprove them, but I could never stop questioning these assumptions about the world. I would have bitter fights with my very woke, very radically feminist and very brilliant and qualified working women colleagues, all of us doing high paying jobs and living comfortable lives as products of India's best graduate and post-graduate schools. I would never win.
Then one day, this book was mentioned in passing in a "hey guys what are we reading nowadays" kind of conversation at work. The title intrigued me, I looked it up and the description drove the intrigue past the threshold required to get a copy. At this point my social media accounts, the ongoing NBA season and the intensity of my work had all colluded to ensure that I had actually not read a book in a very long time. Possibly because of the nature of books I was trying to read but also because reading itself had become a challenging habit for me in a world where stimulation is just a swipe or a tap away. Which is and was tragic, because I had voraciously read my way into several quizzing competitions, extempores, elocutions and myopia from an early age and had long fancied myself a writer of some caliber.
I had begun to believe it was completely an attitude problem, that I might possibly never read a book again. And then Desperately… showed up in the mail. I know the expression a breath of fresh air has become a stale one, but that is exactly what it was. The book started off with a personal account by the author and the characters inhabiting the story felt real. I saw faces from my own life in them. (I actually saw my Mohnish Behl fan of a manager in the Amrita Shergill Marg-residing lover the author described in the initial chapters). I was hooked. The emotions and problems the author described in the lives of these women thrice-displaced from me in time, social status and geography felt relatable. The ignominy, troubles, castigations, periods of self-doubt and self-assurance all felt like corridors of a metaphysical realm that I too have walked through, as a fellow traveller of the human experience. The us and them duology of men and women that had been fed to me before started to disappear, replaced by a more universal understanding of the world as inhabited by human beings.
But perhaps, more than anything else, the book woke me up to the phenomenon that is Shahrukh Khan. I had never been a big fan. My mom preferred Aamir Khan and that conditioned me to believe as a young kid that movies are only good when they have a big social message(The only Shahrukh Khan movie I saw on the big screen as a kid was Chak De India). Shahrukh's movies tend to be shameless or rather unapologetic entertainers, with their several (frequently excellent) song and dance sequences, bright colour palettes, foreign locations, lots of comedy followed by lots of crying, excessive guitar fetishizing and as of 2007, six pack abs. And then there were also the logistics issues. SRK movies would always come out on big festivals and be perennially sold out. I tried very hard to watch Om Shanti Om after having spent most of that year memorizing all the words and moves to Dard-e-Disco only for my dad to not find tickets at any of the theatres in Lucknow that Diwali.
Throughout the course of this book, the author made me realize that the qualities that make Shahrukh's onscreen roles and offscreen persona endearing are not the complete absence of vulnerability and the militaristic control over emotions espoused by a large fraternity of content that are supposed to help boys become men, but rather the exact opposite. Note that these are very very personal takeaways, and you might not share them, because you are not me, but as a kind of sensitive child and a possessor of hobbies and interests somewhat atypical of the capital M-Man "archetype", reading the author's appreciation of Shahrukh's acceptance of his vulnerability, his emotional being-ness and his steadfast commitment to his leading ladies onscreen, his wife offscreen and most of all his job, his art; was inspirational in a non-hackneyed, non-propaganda way.
I also dived deep into his interviews and was charmed even more. This was a man first and legend later. He had very human quirks and failings and disappointments. "The Inner World of Shahrukh Khan" was a documentary that stood out to me the most, even more so than the book. Watching this hour-long clip on YouTube, shot in a sort of a bridge era between the paucity of the 90s and the explosion of material wealth of modern day India, has a certain sense of austerity and personability to it that gives it a very amiable energy, like accidently finding a photo album from the age of photo albums while cleaning house and then spending the rest of the day lost in a cloud of memories. In an age where legends of patriarchs and leaders are all built from similar molds of infallibility and constant adherence to a grand system of old values and virtues to create a sense of "I'll never be able to be this person" awe in the consumers of this type of person-myth; Shahrukh's life story felt simultaneously real yet magical, which made you gasp but also made you believe. He is at once immensely intelligent but also endearingly human. And reading this book and watching his interviews makes you feel okay with being human, being lesser than perfect, of not being in the lead in the imaginary race of life we're constantly running in in our heads because it doesn’t exist. As long as you start and stay committed and be brave enough to accept that you are not there yet but you are trying.
Maybe I liked Shahrukh more than I liked the book. Maybe I should have focused more on the economics and stats and figures than the stories. Maybe I did also see the Barbie movie when I was reading the book and conflated some of the ideas. Very possibly you might not like this book at all. All I can say is, reading this book was a healing experience for me, both in terms of understanding myself as a "man", and to some degree understanding women, understanding the dynamics of relationships with women or anybody for that matter. And just the possibility that it might also be the same for you is good enough for me to recommend it.
Concurrently, and perhaps concomitantly, I have not had a lot of success with women in the marketplace of romance, dating and relationships for most of my life. This had become an all-consuming, burning fire of self-pity and hate that my well-meaning friends begun to try to help me with by turning me over to the writers and online gurus of the "meninist/ladist" movements. The sigma hustle grindset peddlers. The church of Jordan Peterson. YouTube videos where "libs" and feminists get "owned" or "destroyed".
While I am not going to discredit their claims or theories and deny the very real fact that the edicts of this modern day pop philosophy phenomenon have helped a lot of men find peace and contentment in their lives; I could just never identify with a lot of them, especially when it came to matters of women. Because while women may not have had been partners, women had often been lab partners, colleagues, friends and family.
Every time I hover around this subject, my brain always revisits in varying degrees of intensity a particular incident at work a few years ago. This was on my first job, the start of my independent life and all the confusions that come with it. A boring afternoon had given way to an uninspired conversation about relationships. One of the people I worked with, older than me by a few years, was immodestly proud of how successful he was with the opposite sex and would not miss any opportunity to dispense advice. And as a 23 year old timid engineering student who was clueless about women, I would be all ears to hear tales from the other side.
What stood out about this particular conversation and the reason why it is the only one I remember is that my manager, a tall stoic man who I don't recollect participating in these post-lunch insipidities much, was proclaiming loudly with great belief in his heart and ballast in his lungs that "Ek ladka aur ek ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte/ a man and a woman can never be friends". A female colleague and I were good friends, and this little Mohnish Behl impression gave way to a few very tense seconds of silence, until the gloating colleague broke it by jumping onto some other story from his seemingly endless anthology of sexual conquests. In hindsight, my manager, a staunch Jat born and raised on a farm in Haryana, with a brother in the army and a wife that was always at home, probably did not approve of our friendship very much if at all, so this must have been a simpering festering thought in his brain for a while which he eventually found the courage and opportunity to breathe into the world. Anyway, the discord that I felt then, with the statement and my lived reality, is emblematic of how I felt when I consumed aforementioned media.
My principal complaint with these books and these YouTube videos and these jingoisms is that they always assume a hypothetical woman, a platonic ideal whose thoughts and ideas are replicated by women in reality. All women behave the same way. All women react the same way. If women like you, find you attractive and want to sleep with you, it's going to be all of them or none of them. Women have no agency, no free-will, they are a hivemind tasked with deciding which man's genealogy continues and which man's doesn't. Women who are supposed to be by nature caring and loving. Women are submissive. Women follow the alpha.
I couldn't disprove them, but I could never stop questioning these assumptions about the world. I would have bitter fights with my very woke, very radically feminist and very brilliant and qualified working women colleagues, all of us doing high paying jobs and living comfortable lives as products of India's best graduate and post-graduate schools. I would never win.
Then one day, this book was mentioned in passing in a "hey guys what are we reading nowadays" kind of conversation at work. The title intrigued me, I looked it up and the description drove the intrigue past the threshold required to get a copy. At this point my social media accounts, the ongoing NBA season and the intensity of my work had all colluded to ensure that I had actually not read a book in a very long time. Possibly because of the nature of books I was trying to read but also because reading itself had become a challenging habit for me in a world where stimulation is just a swipe or a tap away. Which is and was tragic, because I had voraciously read my way into several quizzing competitions, extempores, elocutions and myopia from an early age and had long fancied myself a writer of some caliber.
I had begun to believe it was completely an attitude problem, that I might possibly never read a book again. And then Desperately… showed up in the mail. I know the expression a breath of fresh air has become a stale one, but that is exactly what it was. The book started off with a personal account by the author and the characters inhabiting the story felt real. I saw faces from my own life in them. (I actually saw my Mohnish Behl fan of a manager in the Amrita Shergill Marg-residing lover the author described in the initial chapters). I was hooked. The emotions and problems the author described in the lives of these women thrice-displaced from me in time, social status and geography felt relatable. The ignominy, troubles, castigations, periods of self-doubt and self-assurance all felt like corridors of a metaphysical realm that I too have walked through, as a fellow traveller of the human experience. The us and them duology of men and women that had been fed to me before started to disappear, replaced by a more universal understanding of the world as inhabited by human beings.
But perhaps, more than anything else, the book woke me up to the phenomenon that is Shahrukh Khan. I had never been a big fan. My mom preferred Aamir Khan and that conditioned me to believe as a young kid that movies are only good when they have a big social message(The only Shahrukh Khan movie I saw on the big screen as a kid was Chak De India). Shahrukh's movies tend to be shameless or rather unapologetic entertainers, with their several (frequently excellent) song and dance sequences, bright colour palettes, foreign locations, lots of comedy followed by lots of crying, excessive guitar fetishizing and as of 2007, six pack abs. And then there were also the logistics issues. SRK movies would always come out on big festivals and be perennially sold out. I tried very hard to watch Om Shanti Om after having spent most of that year memorizing all the words and moves to Dard-e-Disco only for my dad to not find tickets at any of the theatres in Lucknow that Diwali.
Throughout the course of this book, the author made me realize that the qualities that make Shahrukh's onscreen roles and offscreen persona endearing are not the complete absence of vulnerability and the militaristic control over emotions espoused by a large fraternity of content that are supposed to help boys become men, but rather the exact opposite. Note that these are very very personal takeaways, and you might not share them, because you are not me, but as a kind of sensitive child and a possessor of hobbies and interests somewhat atypical of the capital M-Man "archetype", reading the author's appreciation of Shahrukh's acceptance of his vulnerability, his emotional being-ness and his steadfast commitment to his leading ladies onscreen, his wife offscreen and most of all his job, his art; was inspirational in a non-hackneyed, non-propaganda way.
I also dived deep into his interviews and was charmed even more. This was a man first and legend later. He had very human quirks and failings and disappointments. "The Inner World of Shahrukh Khan" was a documentary that stood out to me the most, even more so than the book. Watching this hour-long clip on YouTube, shot in a sort of a bridge era between the paucity of the 90s and the explosion of material wealth of modern day India, has a certain sense of austerity and personability to it that gives it a very amiable energy, like accidently finding a photo album from the age of photo albums while cleaning house and then spending the rest of the day lost in a cloud of memories. In an age where legends of patriarchs and leaders are all built from similar molds of infallibility and constant adherence to a grand system of old values and virtues to create a sense of "I'll never be able to be this person" awe in the consumers of this type of person-myth; Shahrukh's life story felt simultaneously real yet magical, which made you gasp but also made you believe. He is at once immensely intelligent but also endearingly human. And reading this book and watching his interviews makes you feel okay with being human, being lesser than perfect, of not being in the lead in the imaginary race of life we're constantly running in in our heads because it doesn’t exist. As long as you start and stay committed and be brave enough to accept that you are not there yet but you are trying.
Maybe I liked Shahrukh more than I liked the book. Maybe I should have focused more on the economics and stats and figures than the stories. Maybe I did also see the Barbie movie when I was reading the book and conflated some of the ideas. Very possibly you might not like this book at all. All I can say is, reading this book was a healing experience for me, both in terms of understanding myself as a "man", and to some degree understanding women, understanding the dynamics of relationships with women or anybody for that matter. And just the possibility that it might also be the same for you is good enough for me to recommend it.
June 23, 2025
It's been years since i've indulged in my rom-com fixation but every woman has gone through this phase. I would be remiss to sweep it under the rug because this phase shaped who i am as a person today. The weight of unexplored dreams i carry as a single urban woman in her mid-30s may be attributed to the cultural shift that Bollywood's King Khan brought about in the 90s. Shrayana Bhattacharya does a brilliant job of unearthing the influence of evolving gender economics while keeping the Shah Rukh Khan fandom front and centre.
Unlike me, if you're not an SRK fan and romantic comedy is not your favourite genre, I would still highly recommend reading this book to get a sneak peek into the inner lives of women in India. Not only does the author highlight the plight of a woman living in a man's world, she peppers the text with eye-opening statistics which reveal the deeper mileau of economic and job market issues that influence the decisions that women make.
Much like the author, the book is informative, cerebral and delightful. A non-fiction book on gender studies could be a bore. This is anything but that. The author brings a fresh lens of powerful vulnerability on the subject of love by following the lives of women fans of Shah Rukh from different class, caste and social backgrounds over a decade.
Their fandom is characterised as a cultural response to patriarchal structures which started to crack in neo-liberal India, post 1990s. As women silently fought for more freedom in their choices while navigating invisible bureaucracy that made it impossible for them to access resources for survival, they sought refuge in this fandom and made space for love and compassion.
This book made me feel seen without shaming my choices and difficulties. And for that reason alone, it was an unforgettable and joyful read. Thank you for bringing this into existence, Miss Bhattacharya! Take a bow.
Unlike me, if you're not an SRK fan and romantic comedy is not your favourite genre, I would still highly recommend reading this book to get a sneak peek into the inner lives of women in India. Not only does the author highlight the plight of a woman living in a man's world, she peppers the text with eye-opening statistics which reveal the deeper mileau of economic and job market issues that influence the decisions that women make.
Much like the author, the book is informative, cerebral and delightful. A non-fiction book on gender studies could be a bore. This is anything but that. The author brings a fresh lens of powerful vulnerability on the subject of love by following the lives of women fans of Shah Rukh from different class, caste and social backgrounds over a decade.
Their fandom is characterised as a cultural response to patriarchal structures which started to crack in neo-liberal India, post 1990s. As women silently fought for more freedom in their choices while navigating invisible bureaucracy that made it impossible for them to access resources for survival, they sought refuge in this fandom and made space for love and compassion.
This book made me feel seen without shaming my choices and difficulties. And for that reason alone, it was an unforgettable and joyful read. Thank you for bringing this into existence, Miss Bhattacharya! Take a bow.
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