Shrayana Bhattacharya’s Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence (published by HarperCollins India in 2021) explores gender politics, cultural change and economic relations in a neo-liberal India. It draws a parallel between the ever-charming Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s characters from Hindi movies and what Indian women crave in their lives. There could not have been a more interesting way to find similarities among women from different socio-economic backgrounds than to talk about their favourite actor ‘The King Khan of Bollywood’ Shah Rukh Khan.
The book not only talks about Shah Rukh’s impact on fandom culture but the author has also intertwined a lot of issues that women face in terms of gender, caste, class, privilege and singlehood among others. The book consists of four chapters with a preface and ending with the author’s note. These chapters along with their interesting appellations take us on a trip to the economic and personal trajectories of different women in India.
The book starts very dramatically, just like a Bollywood movie with a girl narrating her breakup story and finding comfort in her favourite movie star. The first chapter of the book talks about elite women, the second about the middle class and the third about the lower-class women who love Shah Rukh. The last chapter of the book takes us right in front of Mannat, Shah Rukh’s residence in Mumbai and the madness that happens at its gate. Each of the women that the author talked to relates to one or the other onscreen characters of the icon and if not the character, then it is him as a person.
Vidya, a Tamil Brahmin engineer from Delhi coming from a highly privileged minority of Indian women; due to her job and qualifications relates to the self-made aspect of the star. On the other hand, Manju from Rampur who is involved in a home-based work describes Shah Rukh as representing ‘masculine poetry’. Even a journalist who had the chance to talk to Shah Rukh said “It feels like being in a movie with him, he makes you feel like the most important person in the room and is so sharp and present that you never have to repeat a question or a word, he gets it all the first time” (pp 28).
The interesting thing is that the author talks about Shah Rukh only in the first part of the book while the rest looks upon the lives of the single female fans of Shah Rukh and how we as women and fans look at ourselves- the longing, seeking freedom, love, care and independence. Each woman in the book acknowledges the fact that Shah Rukh’s movies have their problems from sexist remarks to the conventional thinking of marriage and women but they say that his characters portray a feminine side as well. Statistically, his movies have the highest number of dialogues and screen time for women. In the book, Shrayana writes, “he is not a feminist icon, but a female one” (pp 42).
She uses Shah Rukh as a metaphor for comfort and through this gives us an insight into the fascinations of the ‘female gaze’. “Salman protects women, Aamir teaches us and Shah Rukh sees us”, the author writes (pp 80). The author herself and the women she talked to describe Shah Rukh as breaking the norms of toxic masculinity in some way. He might play roles who fight with a lot of people but the way that he cares for his ‘love’ make women fall in love with him even more. For instance, in the movie Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, his character Surinder appreciates the food his wife Tani makes and is in awe of her throughout the movie. This is what some women crave and one girl even says that getting a man like him might make their life better. She emphasises how urban women might have more economic autonomy than rural women but it never translates to any kind of significant agency in the private sphere. She weaves a tale of why the status of women has changed so little even in the post-liberalisation phase.
The author does not call the book an ethnographic account. I would, however, like to say that this book is indeed an ethnographic account of women navigating through discrimination and loneliness, leisure and work, in the fantasy of the global superstar. She uses her interactions of fifteen years through phone calls, chance encounters, weddings, film screenings and interviews to give shape to the book that Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh is today. She also includes statistical data to locate women’s positions in the economy and job market.
The rich statistical data conveys the contexts within which the narratives play out. Shrayana Bhattacharya’s wonderful writing style keeps the reader riveted. Its humour and heartwarming moments help the readers engage with the weighty issues. The author has tried to include women of all regions, religions and socio-economic classes but it would be difficult to claim that it represents all the women and fans in India. She acknowledges the limitations and the fact that the book lacks queer and non-binary representation. She also acknowledges the lack of accuracy in some of the locations due to research ethics. Overall, it is a perfect social science book – well-informed, carefully researched yet enjoyable, simple, entertaining and most importantly empathetic. It caters to people who want an interesting read, an astute account of the lives of women in India and their ‘seeking’ for a man like Shah Rukh along with their opinions on beauty, marriage, money, gender, caste and freedom.
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Dhritimona Bharadwaj is a second-year student of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi.