An Exclusive Excerpt from Shrayana Bhattacharya’s Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh

In her pathbreaking book, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, 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.

Read an excerpt:

Alongside a year of attending church meetings, I completed a survey of domestic workers across hundreds of slums in Delhi and Ahmedabad. The survey data served as inputs for deliberations by the ILO and UNICEF on labour standards for domestic workers. These insights were aimed to inform and advocate for a Domestic Workers’ Convention being drafted by the ILO, which would eventually be passed in 2011. Ten years later, India is yet to ratify the convention.

Through this work between 2008 and 2009, I interacted with activists across the country who were fighting for the rights of domestic workers. Unlike Lily and her friends, most of these workers had no time off and little dignity of labour. They worked erratic hours with erratic wages. Many reported suffering from both verbal and physical violence from employers and broadly tense, passive-aggressive relationships. Domestic workers were tired of being dependent on their employers’ whims and fancies, on the luck of the draw when it came to being treated with basic courtesy and respect. Very few even had use of safe sanitation facilities during working hours, as employers would not allow them to use toilets in the house. Lily knew she was ‘lucky’: no middleman was stealing her salary and she had a steady income. Unlike most women working in India’s care economy, Lily had the privilege of a few certainties. She knew her employers would pay on time every month and she had a bathroom.

She also had access to a television. There was a spare television in a guest room on which she could watch shows for an hour each day. ‘I think my madam would let me watch for more time,’ Lily said, ‘but it doesn’t look good.’ Lily loved watching film songs, especially Shah Rukh songs. She used to hum them as she did her work and even taught her madam about Hindi films and Shah Rukh. Sometimes if she was slow or appeared not to be paying attention, her madam would joke that she was dreaming of Shah Rukh. I asked her why she liked Shah Rukh in particular. ‘It just happened,’ she said. ‘I saw him and I liked him the best. I get to see many heroes and many songs when we cut vegetables in the TV room, but he is the best. He seems like a good man, you know. He makes me laugh. Not violent like other action heroes. We never find time to watch whole movies because of work but they play his love songs all the time on TV, so I get to see him a lot.’

Sometime in October 2010, during her daily hour of television, Lily learned of a Shah Rukh film bonanza in honour of his birthday. The channel advertised its plans to broadcast a film starring Shah Rukh every Sunday at noon for all of November. She wondered if her madam would allow her to watch these movies in their entirety. A week later, noticing that her employers were in a good mood, Lily asked her madam if she could watch these films every Sunday. Although her madam struggled to understand Lily’s interest in a Bollywood hero, she said it was no problem. Madam didn’t mind as long as Lily got her work done. The cook, who didn’t live with the family, said she would come earlier on Sundays to help Lily, and they planned to try and watch the movies together.

Lily was thrilled. She had both permission and a companion. Her happiness did stumble upon a moral dilemma—the Shah Rukh film festival clashed with church on Sunday. If she did not show up dutifully each week to pray, her family and the local priests would reprimand her. A month-long absence would be a sign of extraordinary defiance. Abandoning Sunday church would make her seem too high and mighty to other women in her prayer group. It would signal that she considered both the church and their company to be optional; that she did not believe in the power of prayer. But this was too good an opportunity to miss. She was never going to have the comfort of going to the nearby theatre. The tickets were too expensive and she would feel too guilty spending her money on the movies, even if she went to a cheaper hall. No live-in domestic worker went to watch films without her employer. It was a simple choice: Shah Rukh or Jesus?

That first week in November 2010, she told me, she feigned a fever and sent a message to her aunt apologizing for missing the church service. In the afternoon, she watched Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. She laughed and cried with her hero, and it remains her favourite film. ‘I loved it so much. He doesn’t get what he wants and tries so hard. He lies and cheats, but in the end, he has to let go of what he wanted. And he seemed both sad and happy. It’s like problems in life. It felt very real, and he was so good in all the songs.’ Lily, in her early twenties, had finally managed to watch her first Hindi film from beginning to end.

During the telecast of Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Lily’s madam joined in for bits and pieces to see what all the fuss was about. ‘It was better when she wasn’t around, though,’ Lily said. ‘We can be free. You have to be careful around sir and madam.’ That first Sunday with Shah Rukh, those hours, were a taste of freedom. To compensate for her entertainment, she would wake up two hours earlier to do extra cleaning.

Lily’s life was tightly regulated—by the church, by her job and by her own sense of what her community expected of her. While watching Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, she was acutely conscious of wasting time. As the month progressed, she began to relax. Those four-hour matinees gave her a chance to abandon the clock, to leave religion, routine and regimentation behind. ‘Time kahan gaya, mujhe pata hi nahin chala,’ Lily told me. ‘Itni achi picture thi.’ I lost track of time, that’s how good the film was.

To read more, get your copy of Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh here!