Interviews

Behind-the-scenes of Creating a Bestseller with Shrayana Bhattacharya

With insightful inputs from the editors and author of Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, read a conversation that takes you behind-the-scenes of the process of creating a multi-award-winning bestseller.

Interviewed by Kartik Chauhan for HarperBroadcast.

So much has already been written, celebrated, critiqued and talked about Shrayana Bhattacharya’s Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, yet the ingenious scope and depth of this book offer more entryways into its project every day: tracing, recognizing and registering the inner lives and times of India’s (lonely) women. Bhattacharya’s book has achieved an unusually difficult task—by simply recording the everyday dreams and realities of a group of women, the book has heralded and documented a sociological shift. India’s women are seeking change and opportunity, and they are firm in their pursuit and belief. Shah Rukh is a scrim on which women of this her-land project their dreams, and their objectives for a psychosexual and socioeconomic revolution are well-defined. 

Not only does the book marry intensive research with intimate personality, it also opens a wide range of unsettling questions on social regressions. While it employs Shah Rukh as a vehicle that drives the narrative through these questions, the prose is just as charming and intelligent as its object of affection.  

Talking about the inception of the book, Shougat Dasgupta, a freelance editor and magazine writer based in Delhi says, ‘In my role at a quarterly magazine, I was lucky enough to publish a very early extract from Shrayana’s at the time unfinished book. It became one of the most popular pieces we had ever run. My first impression as an early reader of parts of the book was that it was an intriguing thesis presented in an engaging and original form. I liked the way Shrayana created this sisterhood, this connection with very different women all of whom — including Shrayana herself, of course — turned to Shah Rukh Khan in moments of personal reflection, doubt, crisis and joy. I liked how the book treated “fandom” not as unthinking but as an ongoing engagement, a conversation.’  

Udayan Mitra, who published the book at at HarperCollins India says, ‘Shrayana’s book had me at the title. “Now that’s a great title,” I thought – and it was so apt. This was before I had even read the manuscript; as I read it, I was quite blown away by the way she had brought popular cinema and socioeconomics together.’ Dasgupta, one of Bhattacharya’s first editors, was charmed by the irony of the title: ‘The fact that it’s not Shah Rukh that the women in this book are seeking, but a way in which they can be themselves in a society that makes it so hard for women to be themselves. And I liked the irony of a book “about” one of the world’s most recognizable actors that completely effaces that actor, using him instead as a foil for the main characters of the book, all of them women who reimagine Shah Rukh as a mirror in which they can see themselves as they’d like to be seen.’ 

Armed with an intriguing title and premise, the book has often perplexed readers also. Amrita Mukerji, chief copy editor at HarperCollins India, says, ‘I was unsure of what to expect when I first heard the premise – it seemed a book unlike any I had read. But once I got started, it was a fascinating read, with so many fresh insights (at least for me) into the lives of Indian women. The best thing about the book is that it explores the lives of women from all strata of society, united by their love for Shah Rukh.’ 

While Bhattacharya’s incisive and economical analyses is well-written, Mitra mentions how an important editorial decision was designing the cover of the book. ‘One of the things that we really worked on was the cover of the book – we felt we had to get it just right – not to go all showbiz or too serious, to keep the focus on the women who the book is about, while indicating the intimate presence of SRK in their lives. At the same time, it had to a clean and uncluttered cover that would be easy to remember. Shrayana and her agent Shruti [Debi] were very much part of the ideation for the cover – and the brilliant concept of the woman’s purse, and what all (including the peeking picture of SRK) it would contain, came from my colleague Amit Malhotra: he executed a cover that I think is just perfect for the book.’ 

Given its groundbreaking potential to affect and attend to social education, one of the challenges of the book, one would think, would be to make it accessible to a mass readership that actively engages with the book. For Dasgupta, this concern was secondary. ‘As an occasional editor who has never had to deal with the commercial side of publishing, I frankly didn’t think about who might read the book,’ he says. ‘I thought only about the text, about the sentences and how I might be able to help Shrayana tell the story she wanted to tell. It was a privilege for me to work on the book because it is so unusual to read nonfiction like this in India, a book that skips so lightly across such varied terrain.’ That the book has been accepted – across print, ebook and audiobook editions – by a mass readership then, is a testament to its incredible insight.  

The appeal of the book is also regulated by its refreshing discourse that straddles academia and entertainment seamlessly. Mukerji says, ‘I think this book shows how to make research accessible – the unique “hook” of Shah Rukh and his fandom has been used to drive across important points about the status of Indian women. Usually, such books remain in the realm of academia… It was a great experience and a privilege to work on the book; such books only come along once in a while.’ 

Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh is a multivocal narrative, populated by a group of women who find a channel to tell their stories through Bhattacharya’s prose. Dasgupta also celebrates the author’s polyphony: ‘I remember being impressed by how well the book held together structurally. How easily Shrayana was able to move between various modes of communication, as a professional researcher, as a memoirist, as a fan, as an interviewer, as a sympathetic ear and so on.’ 

The book beckons the arrival of a terrific social researcher and writer, Mitra suggests. He says, the book ‘opens the doors for many more multidisciplinary studies: after all, we don’t live our lives in buckets, and I’m always fascinated by narratives that explore the multi-dimensional ways in which cultures, economies, societies function.’ Shougat resonates Mitra’s opinion: ‘If there’s a lesson for a writer to glean from this book, it is to find your own way, your own form to tell the story you want to tell. And to bring everything you know, feel, think and have done, to bear on the narrative.’  

As Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh wins critical acclaim and finds its place in readers’ hearts, we are eagerly awaiting for more voices like Shrayana’s and the women in her book to inscribe and amplify their narratives in their own words. 

We chatted with Shrayana Bhattacharya about the book and its reception. Edited excerpts below: 

  1. From previous interviews, we know the idea of the book came to you during field work. Shah Rukh became a dome around a Her-land, and a community of women allowed the creation of the How did you deal with the complex challenge of paralleling the seemingly Bollywood symbol of entertainment with the more ‘serious’ questions of economics? Did you ever feel that the Shah Rukh metaphor might cloud the landscape of the analysis you were attempting?

    SB: Not at all. As I write in the second page of the book, the text is not about SRK but rather how the women I encountered would use his icon to talk about themselves. At the very start of the writing process, I was very clear that SRK’s icon was a research method to trace women’s economic and personal trajectories. The fact that these women struggled to do something as simple as watch their favourite actor captured how women’s economic freedoms were so severely compromised. Fandom for Mr Khan serves as an unusual research device, his pervasive and powerful icon allowed for many difficult conversations on men, money and misogyny to emerge. Between 2006 and 2008, I was a young research assistant for various projects aimed at understanding the working conditions of women in different types of precarious jobs. These women were engaged by low-paid home-based industries and as domestic workers. Each of the women I interviewed was well aware of her own labour struggles; each was contending and fighting for improved wages and rights for herself. These women did not really need an outside researcher to prod and remind them of their deprivations. They seemed thoroughly bored by my standard survey questions and efforts at data collection. So, we started taking breaks, what I call a “research recess” in the book. During these breaks, we would talk about the few things we shared, particularly Hindi film and its icon. And everywhere I went, I met SRK fans. I noticed this remarkable change in energy and enthusiasm to talk and share experiences the moment Mr Khan and his iconography were invoked. Much like any of us, these women were far happier to openly discuss what delighted them as opposed to what depressed them. In these early conversations, fandom emerged as a refreshing lens to understand women’s socio-economic realities. Because fandom is an economic activity. Following a movie star requires money, free time and easy access to markets and media. These are all attributes of the economy.

  2. Something that we are talking about increasingly, is how representation matters, and how narratives can be ‘hijacked’. The book intimately details the inner lives of Indian women, and essentially, it serves as short memoirs of various lives. Enabling these voices to be heard—and given the reception of your book, reverberate—with the readership, how relevant do you think is the need for writers and researchers to document lives of the ‘invisible’ communities? Do you also feel that such an exercise limits the scope of representation in the sense that narratives can be ‘hijacked’ by the intellectuals/academics?
    SB: The point of telling a cross class story of working women was to draw the similarities and pinpoint the differences in the way womanhood is experienced in India. Yet, each woman was resisting patriarchy in her own way. We are united in struggle against an economic framework that does not value women’s labours. While social norms can compound the sense of being marginalized, the feeling of loneliness knows no caste or religion. We are united in aspiring for a friendlier masculinity. And as I mentioned in the last chapter of the book, we risk losing fruitful conversation by remaining in our identity-based islands. Finally, good research requires strong ethical norms of reciprocity and privacy. I am grateful to my professors and colleagues who helped me ensure that those involved in the research were consulted and clearly notified of how their stories would be written. There were several who decided against participating, and I had to respect their wishes or other requests for edits.
  3. Personally for me, and for many other readers of the book I have talked to, one of the most phenomenal stories from the book is that of Gold. Gold resonates with a greater part of the Indian readership because of her rebellious enterprise in the face of middle-class cultural regression. In Gold’s story, the focus is on how sexual independence for Indian women often comes at the cost of moral vilification. Based on the timeline of the book, how do you think this idea of women’s sexual independence has evolved over time? And how much has Shah Rukh been a part of this ‘metamorphosis’?
    SB: As India liberalized its economy, sex was liberalized in some sections of society. Gold’s chapter is an illustration of this phenomenon. But despite the shiny glittery modernity of sex and dating, that segment of the research taught me how the hetero mating market is a men’s market and continues to be. In Gold’s world, straight cisgender men could pursue more sexual adventure without the fear of egregious social judgement and pregnancy. Women on the other hand were solely responsible for their own sexual hygiene, abortions and reproductive health. SRK’s films have always been fairly sexually anodyne other than Maya Memsaab or Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, so no, his films don’t capture this evolution. His films do capture the growing trend of individual partner choice though.
  4. Talking about men, in your book you hint at how Shah Rukh’s fandom is mostly composed of women. He represents a model of masculinity that comes close to ‘positive masculinity’. Recently, there has been an increasing focus on conversations on ‘toxic masculinity’. In the book, you also laud SRK for being his wonderful replies to intrusive questions on his sexuality. Do you think Shah Rukh’s model of masculinity isolates him to an audience of majorly women, and makes him less of a ‘man’, simultaneously? Do you think a male counterpart of your book can be a possibility? (Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh/Deepika: India’s Lonely Young Men and the Search for Intimacy and Independence).
    SB: He embodies a vulnerable masculinity, with all the tears and jokes. A masculinity that races with helicopters and also helps make chicken in the kitchen. This kind of image shall remain unusual in our cultural landscape of stoic and reserved male icons. As for other icons, I’m sure there is a book waiting to be written on what the rise of a certain type of male politician signals about masculinity in India. Similarly, I noticed a huge interest in female film icons amongst the Gen Z through my research. Young girls in the slums of Delhi are watching Priyanka Chopra or Deepika Padukone and admire their success, and how open they have been about boyfriends and working after marriage. Perhaps, we can learn about contemporary femininity through conversations about many aspirational actresses.

When Shrayana met Shah Rukh!

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