SHRAYANA BHATTACHARYA: DESPERATELY SEEKING SHAH RUKH

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Vi propongo una rassegna stampa relativa al saggio del 2021 Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh. India's lonely young women and the search for intimacy and independence, a firma dell'economista Shrayana Bhattacharya. Il volume indaga la condizione socio-economica femminile in India partendo da uno spunto piuttosto bizzarro: se e in quale modo la superstar hindi Shah Rukh Khan ha influito nella vita personale delle sue sostenitrici, in particolare nel periodo della liberalizzazione economica (anni novanta). Viene da chiedersi: esiste davvero qualcosa che il Re non possa fare?

- Taps into the Myth and the Mannat of SRK, Prathyush Parasuraman, Film Companion, 2 novembre 2021:

'Mannat

Shrayana Bhattacharya in her fascinating book, (...) her love letter to both Shah Rukh - not Shah Rukh Khan, not SRK, but Shah Rukh, an invitation to intimacy - and women, calls him "the receptacle of so many of our expectations". Often, she capitalizes the H in He when referring to him, both aware of and buying into his god-like stardom. (...) Is it possible to extract the human from the myth? No? The alternative, which is what Bhattacharya does here, is then to contextualize that myth. (...) In 2017 (...) 60% of the audience members at an Indian cinema hall were men. Even in Mumbai, the single screen theaters are often bastions of male assertion. Most of the women Bhattacharya speaks to - from small towns, villages, big cities, the metropolis - were often dictated to never visit the theater. When they did so secretely, they were punished, slapped. It was an unsafe place, unbecoming of a woman. And yet Shah Rukh emerged in their lives, "divided by class, united by fandom", with pirated copies and music cassettes of his films, the television revolution that brought his cinema into the house, and later the internet, which would bring the entire archive of his films and interviews under the access of a thumb swipe. (...) But Bhattacharya is clear that while he elicits female fandom, he isn't a feminist icon. The characters he plays often champion noxious ideas of entitlement or dated pursuits of love. But his unthreatening gait, his inviting charm, and his interviews where he champions his wife paint an aura of the masculine ideal. (...) Even by measuring the screen time given to the men as compared to the women in his films, Bhattacharya notes how there is more space and time for women in his cinematic universe compared to his contemporaries. (...)

The labour market

Reading Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, I often felt like I was reading two different, often unconnected books - one on the condition of women in the labour market, and the other, about how these women relate to, aspire towards, or seek solace from Shah Rukh. (...) The book on the labour market is cutting, precise, laden with statistics, and then counter-statistics to doubts you might and will have; the kind of careful defensiveness that comes from being surrounded by skeptics. Bhattacharya notes that the labour force participation of women has dropped despite the economic boom. The numbers are shocking. Between 2004 and 2011, while the economy was growing at around 7%, the share of women in the labour force fell to 33%, and thereon even further. In 2017, it hit a historic low of 23,3%. The pandemic further pushed this decline. India is the only middle-income country where economic growth and poverty reduction has not led to more women working outside of their home. India is placed among the bottom 5 countries on gender gap in economic participation. (...) But this isn't just an economic problem. It is a problem of social conditioning, for even among the wealthiest top twenty percent of urban Indians between the ages of 20 and 55, only 6% of married women were employed. But how does this connect to Shah Rukh? The women Bhattacharya speaks to - 80 in-depth interviews - (...) are also fans of Shah Rukh Khan. The tether, as one can imagine, between the labour market and the Shah Rukh fandom, is very thin. It is this part of the book, on Shah Rukh's fandom, that feels awkward and repetitive in its insistence on profundity. The insights are shaky, like throwing ideas at a wall, hoping something will stick. She uses the famous "Shah Rukh or Salman?" question as an icebreaker, and has met many a fan through this. Some of them are confused by her prodding. (...) Often Shah Rukh emerges only on the edges of their story, unimportant, but dressed up to feel central. (...) One of the fans Bhattacharya interviews, facetiously, but also, perhaps, correctly, developed a test to detect misogyny in Indian men using the fandom they belong to, "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. My test rarely fails".'

- In the sunshine of Shah Rukh's love, Uday Bhatia, Mint, 22 gennaio 2022:

'“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.” This is the crux of Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, an ambitious and impassioned non-fiction book that looks at the lives of women in India through the lens of their fandom. Shrayana Bhattacharya, a senior economist at the World Bank, spoke to women across economic strata for 15 years about love, work, agency, and the actor whose films offer everything from diversion to comfort and encouragement. (...)

Did the realisation that this is a book about Shah Rukh’s female fans, and not about the man himself, arrive at the start?

I think it came towards the middle, to be honest. In 2006, I was sent to collect data, the way any research assistant would. All these women I was sent to survey, when I would ask them about their wages, their working conditions, these were realities they were very aware of. I was uncomfortable that these people were so bored, so I started talking about Shah Rukh. I thought I was asking them about him, about his films, but instead they were talking about their husbands, their lovers, how difficult it is to earn money to watch Shah Rukh. I diligently had these conversations. Some of them knew I was thinking of converting these into an academic book at that time. Till 2013 it was, to me, these women and how they see Shah Rukh. Then, I decided - for personal reasons - that I wanted to broaden the scope of the book to include my own class. It’s when I started to talk to them and went back to look at the old notes that it occurred to me this was no longer a book about Shah Rukh Khan. I realised he was actually a research device. Then I completely restructured the book. (...)

One thing you reiterate is that these women are active creators of the Shah Rukh persona.

Received wisdom was he was the creator of that persona, and everyone else was just a consumer. But I realised that narrative is totally wrong. If you look at what’s usually said about Shah Rukh, it’s that he’s an NRI (non-resident Indian) star, who caters to thirsty housewives. I did not see that at all. I knew that he was the person who narrated the story around social mobility, but the amount he symbolised that to people from an elite background surprised me. And then what really surprised me was the way women in working class and low-income communities thought of him as being an escape when their lives were so difficult, giving them almost a demonstration of what a good man could be. I was shocked about the way women would cry about his films when talking about the lack of romantic agency in their lives. I was really surprised how, for a younger generation of women, he represents opportunity and liberalisation.

Why do you term his best performance that of the “unapologetic middle-class superstar”?

This is where the economy reacts with film. Inequality among our top 10%, the difference between the mega rich and the merely rich, has grown unimaginably. And I think he captures this. When people look at him, they see a merely rich person who has become mega rich. He has been, from his early 20s, the hyper elite of our country. And yet people feel so taxed because of the way network wealth is so important in our economy, that they will all look at him as someone who “made it”, who triumphed over patronage and networks. Another reason I think is important is he came to prominence in that liberalisation period. Suddenly, there were creative spirits of the economy that had been unleashed - he’s one example of that. He capitalised on everything the reform process maintained. (...) We think of him as capturing that original moment. I will say one more thing. If you look at his (early) interviews, I don’t think anyone is talking about money and the need to earn it and hold on to it (as much as he is). Bollywood stars don’t talk about money. But he’s saying openly in interviews that I needed to take loans, I needed to buy a house. He was very open about it.

You write that women who grew up watching Shah Rukh films graduated to watching his interviews in their 30s. Why do you think this is?

I think there are three reasons. One is that he was one of the first actors who, in the 1990s, talked about feeling bad, feeling depressed. I think a lot of women connected with him because he addressed these everyday negative feelings of anxiety, competition, job market issues. The second reason people were very enchanted was that he was a good public speaker. I know so many women, and men also, who said they would take tips on how to talk in public from his interviews. And the third is just that they are really charming and fun. He will entertain you, he will illuminate - it’s a performance. And there’s a fourth thing, which is particularly for women. If you look at the interviews, he was always talking about his mother, his wife. He was talking about marital fidelity, about his female co-stars. We can say some of it might be posturing - but he was saying it. I don’t think any of our male superstars at that time were valorising womanhood.

At one point, you paint, and address, a composite picture of the Shah Rukh fan. It reminded me of how, in market research, one is asked to visualise the target group as a single person.

The way I did that was, there were about a hundred women from my class group whom I spoke to. I wrote up an average. And then I thought, what’s a way to communicate an average? So what’s on the page is the median elite Shah Rukh fan.

Did you debate whether to interview Shah Rukh for the book?

Actually, I never thought of it. (...) This is not a text about Shah Rukh but a text about gender and economy, and he played this research device role to enter into the lives of these women. (...) He doesn’t need to be involved, because, in a way, it’s not him as a person but him as a construct. I realised that if he entered the agency would no longer be with the ordinary fan. He’s so powerful - it would just become him and his voice.

The book was to release around the time the storm over his son Aryan Khan exploded. Were you worried that a narrative you had constructed over so many years might spin out of control?

No, and this is something that’s heartening. I was confident that the love for him superseded whatever internet trollery political agents could buy. Having said that, I faced abuse from right-wing nuts when I put up an innocuous tweet about how I used to stand outside Mannat. I know that because of who he is and where we are as a country, the moment you say this generation of women is in love with a Muslim actor, there are people who will react with extremely hateful views'.

Shrayana Bhattacharya

- In a sea of Indian men, why everyone is seeking Shah Rukh, Sarim Naved, The Wire, 8 febbraio 2022:

'Khan is a unifying factor for women, Adivasi and Brahmin. The author is an accomplished economist and writer, choosing Khan as the constant for her study of Indian women, and to an extent men, born in the ’80s and ’90s. It goes beyond the anecdotal and evaluates its subjects utilising hard data as well. While Khan may be the constant, the variables are many - caste, class, geographical and occupational. The struggles of these women, divided by these variables, are of course very different from each other. Some seek personal fulfilment while others are just looking to make a living. (...) I can fully endorse this work - it is deeply engaging, and as a reader, or at least a male one, will take your minds down many paths which you did not know existed. As an analysis of the world of 30-something metropolitan professionals, regardless of gender, it’s a therapeutic read. It’s just accurate. The Shah Rukh Khan mythos started in the mid-1990s and is still going strong, even if every new release is not a monster hit. Khan is now in the news mostly for the attacks on him and his family. The myth is a dangerous one for the current ruling dispensation. It unifies what they want to divide. This man who flaunts his faith while maintaining an old-world air of accommodative secularism does not conform to the stereotype that they wish to assign to him. A work as detailed as this would obviously have taken years to plan, research and to write. By luck or design, the book has released at a time when Khan has become more relevant than ever. The “idea of India” that is the site of all political contestation these days now incorporates the fate of Shah Rukh Khan as an unavoidable part of its own destiny. Will Khan stay in India? Will he continue acting in films? Will he withdraw from public life? These are questions not only about Khan the person but about the trajectory that the country is on. Leaving one’s own imagined grievances with Khan aside, the man is rather uniquely placed to influence this country and society. We need people who can communicate charm, empathy and kindness. So, I say, Khan for PM. Why the hell not?'.

- recensione di Suman Joshi, The Hindu, 12 marzo 2022:

'Using Shah Rukh Khan’s films and the reforms of 1991 as starting points, Shrayana Bhattacharya makes women talk about their lives, from compromises to outright rebellion. (...) This genre-bending book looking at women in post-1991 India draws you in from the word go. (...) It presents a powerful commentary on the lives of Indian women and the ways they deal with inequities. Most importantly, it provides women a toolkit to navigate the changing landscape of economy and society in their search for freedom and happiness. 

Watershed moment 

The watershed moment of the 1991 reforms serves as an anchor, as the author traces the rise of the Indian economy and the simultaneous arrival of Shah Rukh Khan as a superstar. The author wears her economist hat lightly, but combines hard economic data, such as falling female labour force participation rate, hidden taxes women pay and a whole host of metrics, with surveys and interviews to paint a picture of the state of women. What makes this work special is her ability to use heart-warming, everyday stories to provide a relatable view of complex economic phenomena. The book draws on her work of following the trajectories of a group of women across caste, religion and class groups over several years. It has a generous smattering of songs and dialogues from SRK’s movies, deploying his work as a literary tool to string together stories of women whose paths would otherwise never cross. The magical SRK touch adds to the readability and fun quotient of the book. (...) ‘Fantasies’ give a glimpse into what Shah Rukh inspired in young elite girls growing up in the 1990s. The stories, one of which is the author’s own, and interviews of women bring out the contradictions women confront and the compromises they have to make despite being educated and upwardly mobile. Questions are raised regarding gender relations among the well-heeled. “Why do women resign their love lives to the trappings of male power and prestige? Why do so many successful women acquire a taste and tolerance for inequality in their private lives?” An interesting side story is the ringside view of Delhi drawing rooms with their own codes; and the trappings of power and male chauvinism. Her astute observation about the gaps in confidence arising out of social conditioning - “The upper class mating market seemed neatly divided between males with unwarranted self confidence and women with unwarranted self-doubt” - makes one question and ponder over what can be done to bridge these gaps. The 1991 reforms are estimated to have pulled millions of people out of poverty. A transformation of this magnitude that included structural changes in the economy was bound to have an impact on women. The expansion in large scale manufacturing, urbanisation and the boom in IT services changed the nature of the economic opportunities available, thereby impacting familial relationships too. 

Gambles for a dream 

‘Baazigar’ tackles the changes in the nature of relations within families and the societal contract during this economic boom. It also throws light on the nature of resistance for women in tier two cities, away from the cosmopolitan milieu of the big cities. The stories of women in this section all involve the baazis, gambles that women in tier-II cities take in an attempt to live a life they dream of. The stories ‘The Accountant’ and ‘A Girl called Gold’ are characterised by the struggle and strife at home to gain an education, choose a career and resist the pressures to “settle down”. While Gold makes the ultimate gamble and runs away from her Rajasthan home, The Accountant wages her battle of resistance within the confines of her home, revealing the many shades of pushback against restrictive traditional family structures. Women claim their space in their own unique ways, choosing from a spectrum of options from compromise to outright rebellion. There is no magic bullet to empowerment. No book studying gender in India can be complete without studying the lives of women from the informal economy, who are in the bottom two-thirds of wages, in households at or below the poverty line. In ‘Working from Home’, the author leaves the capital and travels to Gujarat, Jharkhand and the Northeast. She provides insights into the invisible lives of women in home-based industries such as textiles and tobacco as also domestic and field survey workers. The first stop is Ahmedabad. Given the vast socio-economic gap between the author and the women, how does she get these women to open up about their lives, love and aspirations? Through Shah Rukh and his movies and music, of course! The women open up about their struggles after the author uses the ice breaker question: “who is your favourite actor?” Using the metaphor of dialogue from the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - “a home that is built on the foundations of compromise and not love is not a home (ghar), it’s a house (makaan)” the author demonstrates the give and take that women of the slum struggle with for mobility and economic independence. The second story is from Rampur, U.P., where Manju represents the boredom of women in small town India that have been denied agency for work and leisure. While young men get to ride bikes and watch movies, girls are denied mobility for work or leisure thus experiencing inequality through boredom. 

In her conclusion, the author draws attention to the “crisis of love” and discusses solutions to issues women face. She makes a compelling argument to avoid big bang revolutions or twitter hashtag movements, instead imploring women to attempt “intimate revolutions”, where each one of us looks into our personal equations to address our own disequilibriums'. 

- Read an exclusive excerpt from Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, Hindustan Times, 5 gennaio 2023.

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