Why India’s Young Women Still Seek Shah Rukh

When I started hearing a buzz about  Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh  from reader friends, I ordered my copy but allowed it to inhabit the clumsily stacked pile of “To-be-Read.” As an unabashed practitioner of  tsundoku, the Japanese term for those who accumulate more books than they can ever read, I had soon forgotten its existence till it flashed into view while searching for another title. I started flipping through the first few pages with the surprised delight one might experience when encountering an exotic dessert. 

Knowing that the author worked as an economist at the World Bank had set me up to expect a rather dry, academic tract about the state of women in the country. This book is anything but that. Shrayana is not only endearingly candid about her own love life – “At work, I am competent and composed. At love, I am a fumbling failure” – but also emotionally tugged by the research she conducts, refusing to occupy the position of a detached, data-driven academic.

While she dives into the numbers with the alacrity one would expect from someone in her profession, she also brings her heart into the field, with an acute sensitivity to her own academic privilege or cultural distance from some of her interviewees. When trying to plumb the appalling drop of working women in India – across socioeconomic strata – she builds bridges by discussing a shared interest: unapologetic worship or fandom of the iconic Bollywood hero, Shah Rukh Khan.

Like countless other millennial women in India, she admits to fantasizing about the star: enticed not just by his on-screen persona but even by his off-screen appearances, the manner in which he conducts himself with an apparently rare  maryada  or respect towards women. Moreover, she takes on severe feminists who might dismiss Shah Rukh Khan fans for revealing their seemingly frivolous immersion in films, interviews, magazine appearances and other media glimmers of the country’s looming post-liberalization star. “Is struggling to find a boyfriend a suitable feminist grievance?” asks Shrayana, espousing an all-too-human vulnerability. It was Shah Rukh who seeded, in her cohort, a notion of “romantic love,” that millions like her find hard to recreate amidst the men they encounter, whether in Delhi drawing rooms or in Bareilly’s gullies.

Shah Rukh himself might be somewhat disbelieving of the position he occupies. On a David Letterman show, he admitted to being an “employee of the myth of Shah Rukh Khan.” Of course, such candor and modesty only amplify his status among his devoted followers. Many journalists, who claim to have been untouched by his charisma earlier, admit to succumbing to his “relentless charm offensive.” Some of this worship is also particular to Indian culture. This, after all, is a land “given to deification,” be it of political leaders, film stars, or cricketers. With the kind of exposure that movies ensure, as the actor himself put it, even doorknobs might be worshipped.

More significantly, for Shrayana, her fandom enables her to forge relationships with a varied panoply of women, that cut across class, religion, place and culture. This project emerged almost by accident: sparked off by her forays into research, as a developmental economist keen on bettering the world and addressing its glaring inequities. But when talking to women working in the informal economy – like textile workers in Ahmedabad or domestic workers – she often found that her question about wages, working hours, and other conditions did not carry the conversations too far. After all, many of these women already had a keen sense of their own economic and social positions, and their abilities (or otherwise) to negotiate better terms for themselves.

With an intimate knowledge of how such surveys are not just objective, but also subjective exercises, wherein the persona of the surveyor can also impact the quality of the data collected, Shrayana started broaching topics of common interest. Like, Shah Rukh. Like the perennially running  Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge  (DDLJ). Or  Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. She found, often, that the women then opened up in a manner that would have been inconceivable with survey questions. This then became a pet personal project. To share stories of fandom with women across diverse societal layers, and in the process, cull the stories of India’s women. Which turns into a revealing and, if often, distressing portrait of intimate relations in a country that deploys 21st-century technospeak but turns the clock back by several centuries inside households.

Even wealth does not offer sufficient protection. In some ultra-rich households, women are often policed, not only in terms of what they wear and where they go but also in how they subdue themselves at social gatherings. As Shrayana, who often witnessed such cultural nuances through an endowed ex-boyfriend, observes: “Beautiful, intelligent and bored, these ladies had invested their entire lives in priming and perfecting their minds and bodies. Now they waited to be desired at social gatherings, while their husbands were drunk on the past.”

It’s also fascinating how male affinity to a particular Khan might frame one’s political inclinations and character. As one female fan put it: “If a man likes Shah Rukh, he is usually progressive. If a man likes Salman, he is bad news. If a man likes Aamir, he’s often a bearded liberal who likes his own voice too much.” Unfortunately, most men, according to the author and her women interviewees, tend to mimic Salman. But most women are hunting for the elusive Shah Rukhs. And it’s not just the superficial aspects – like the way he looks or the muscles he flaunts – but the tiny actions that appeal. For instance, in DDLJ, he peels carrots. He’s also spotted helping with household chores in other films. And it’s that thrust towards equality that is apparently missing in most Indian men. As Shrayana puts it: “Each Shah Rukh fan had a common source of frustration: few experienced emotional equality or domestic parity in their relationships with men.”

Read this book if you want to gain a sense of contemporary gender relations or the gaps between male constructs and female desire. And if you are a young Indian man on the hunt for a modern, liberal woman, don’t just build your muscles. Instead, you might do well to expand your mind and heart. In the meanwhile, with all these women yearning for Shah Rukh, one wonders what the actor is desperately seeking. Himself, perhaps?

References:

Shrayana Bhattacharya, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women And The Search for Intimacy and Independence, Harper Collins India, 2021.