Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence

After reading an interview of Shrayana, possibly in Mint, I decided to pick up the book. Two confessions to start with: first, I am a fanboy of Amitabh Bachchan, as Shrayana is of Shah Rukh Khan. So even as I started reading Shrayana’s book, I kept thinking whether the same book could have been written in 1980s with Amitabh Bachchan replacing Shah Rukh Khan. If Shah Rukh had a few negative roles at the beginning of his career, so did Bachchan before him with movies like Parwana, Gehri Chaal and even Deewar; Bachchan also had his share of female fans. But Bachchan almost always did what he did on the screen for his mother, for his sister, for his sister-in-law, friend’s wife, but almost never ever for his girlfriend or wife.While Bachchan represented the angst of the 1970s and 1980s youth, he never was to young girls and women what Shah Rukh was or still is. In many ways, it is a function of the times when the two stars have been at the peak of their profession. But as Shrayana has convincingly shown, Shah Rukh is different. The same era has had stars like Salman Khan and Amir Khan, but they do not have the same appeal. It is not just about his films, but also about his conduct publicly and in what he says in his interviews. So it is in the fitness of things that Shrayana chose Shah Rukh as the peg around which to tell her story and story of other girls and women from different cross-sections of life. It helped that she is a self-confessed Shah Rukh fangirl and therefore, the book never feels contrived or false, but authentic.Second, as I read the book, I was surprised that many of the observations in Shrayana’s book were same as or similar to what I wrote in my book “Half a Billion Rising: The Emergence of the Indian Woman”. Naturally I felt pleased. Shrayana has explored the lives of many girls and women from different backgrounds – middle class to socioeconomically challenged, from villages to small town to metro cities, well-educated to barely literate and even illiterate. Shah Rukh is the common thread that binds them, apart from their struggles because of their gender. Through this common love for Shah Rukh, Shrayana peels their stories over years and paints a beautiful mosaic about their lives with all its complexities, fun, laughter, camaraderie, failures, relationships and disappointments.I think the most important conclusion for me is that men need to change and while laws and policies are fine, the change in social mindset takes much longer and has to happen one household at a time. This change is needed in all strata of the society and it has to happen one family at a time. For changing this mindset, apart from time, the role of civil society, NGOs and enlightened and brave men and women is very important. Shrayana highlights the role of SEWA, one such institution.Hopefully we will reach a tipping point soon when change will accelerate and not move forward at a snail’s pace. I mention the commonality of observations and conclusions – and please indulge me here even it is self-publicity – because Shrayana’s work is that of a trained researcher and development economist and therefore, there is a framework, which is academic but never pedantic, which makes it more robust, although an easy read given the personal accounts of the people she meets. They are all fangirls of Shah Rukh, like Shrayana is. This strength is also the weakness of the book since many of the main characters of the book are Hindi speaking. Shrayana uses numbers and data sparingly through the book and has included most of the data in the Annexures, which makes it useful for the more serious reader.The first chapter in the book kind of left me not too excited. But then the book grew on me as I peered into the lives of Shrayana, Vidya, Manju, Gold, The Accountant, Manju’s mother, Lily, Najma, Zahira and a few more. Their struggles, their aspirations, the support they receive from different people at different points of time and their stories bring to life how far we have travelled and how far we still have to travel. It is a long winding potholed road. As Shrayana quotes Shah Rukh: “Changing how people dress is hugely different from changing how people think.” The latter is infinitely more difficult and infinitely more important.What Shrayana explicitly doesn’t focus on (and what I had focused on quite a bit) is that in every strata of the society the girls are working hard, studying, trying to become economically independent; they know it is their escape to victory and better life. Meanwhile the boys with their bikes, their sunglasses, their gyms and their T20 matches are falling behind, in many cases. They will try and exert more control over girls and women in their lives in the coming years as what they see as the natural order of the society is challenged, but maybe they fail. For every man who is not changing, there is also an Aslam bhai, Manju’s husband and others and therein lies hope. Uncomfortable questions are also raised like “if every individual in the family is treated as free and equal citizens, then the family itself will collapse”, as families are based on set hierarchies and roles based on gender and age.The book has its share of wit and humour. Some stood out for me like where Shrayana pokes fun at herself when her friends tell her that she’s dating the “who’s who of human crap” or when she describes her early career as “a devoted member of the Development Studies Tribe… a firm believer in the cult of the Survey”. It takes a village girl Manju to do a reality check when she asks Shrayana, “Can your survey turn these men into Shah Rukh?” There are a couple of errors, which are minor but should be corrected in subsequent editions: the SC chief justice was accused of sexual harassment by a junior assistant II, and not by a lady lawyer; and in pg 362 the word “nine” shouldn’t have been there before “9,000”. Small typos or errors but they jar from what is an excellent book.This is a powerful easy to read book and tells stories that need to be told and retold. I fell in love with the book. Try to pick up a copy and as Shah Rukh says in one of his biggest hits: “Come, Fall in Love.” You cannot but not fall in love with this book, then think, think a lot and try to change, even as you learn how our society is changing ever so slowly.

I had heard about this book some time ago and was so glad when I was able to purchase it on US Amazon!I love the detail to her study as well as the personal stories--great read

The books have arrived in a dirty and damaged condition

This is a riveting read - painting a complex and evocative picture of the interior and (carefully circumscribed) public lives of Indian women as represented by their undying often intransigent and/or derided fandom of the one and only SRK. The book adroitly combines hard data with compelling personal narratives - facts and figures mingle with giggles and gasps in a seamless breathless invigorating ride. You don't have to be a policy wonk or an SRK fan to love this. Highly recommend!

It's a perfect blend of facts and fiction and highly relatable to all female SRK fans !