I don’t remember how old I was when I watched my first Hindi movie —  maybe ten years old, maybe younger. But I do remember twirling around the living room, dancing to “Mere Khwaboon Mein Jo Aaye” with my mother. Years later, I would show Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (DDLJ) to my ten-year-old sister. It was her first Hindi movie too. And just as I had danced all those years ago, we danced along to Kajol-in-a-white dress too. When the end credits rolled, I asked my sister what she thought of the film. She said, "He tar thodasa India wali fairytale hoti.” That’s Marathi for "This was a bit like an Indian fairytale." 

I found an echo of these words when I read Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh by Shrayana Bhattacharya. The words were spoken by Lily, a domestic worker from Jharkhand who had migrated to Delhi. For her, the world of Shah Rukh Khan was just as much a fairytale as it had been for my ten-year-old sister. For most Indian women that holds true. Because the fantasy SRK creates isn’t just about romance. It’s also a fantasy of carving space — for love, ambition, and agency — in a world that so often denies that to us. 

It’s that fantasy that frames the issues that Bhattacharya explores in her book. Contrary to what the name suggests, the protagonist of Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh isn't the Bollywood superstar. It’s the women who, through their own experiences, have found shelter in the idea of him and what he represents. The author gives us a glimpse into the lives of these women – each from a different class position — and yet connected by their womanhood. Bhattacharya uses these stories to tell a deeper story through economic data and qualitative research. She makes connections by using statistics on women’s employment, economic mobility, and marriage, to explore the intersection of love and labour.

Drawing from employment data, wage gaps, and female workforce participation, she establishes connections between Indian women’s financial independence and their romantic choices. Through this, she builds a compelling argument on how desire isn’t just personal. It’s political, and shaped by the opportunities and limitations that define a woman’s life. She theorizes how economic freedom (or the lack of it) dictates not just who women can love, but also how much they can afford to dream. For me, the author, and so many women, Shahrukh Khan is a mirror and a lens. Through that lens, we make sense of our desires, our aspirations, and our ideas of love and freedom. 

I’m writing this just ahead of my undergraduate convocation. I come from a generation that sadly missed out on Shahrukh Khan’s romantic icon era and instead identify him more as an action hero. We didn’t grow up watching his characters love women with tenderness — we saw him fight, chase, and win. This made us less forgiving of sexist remarks and the stalking culture promoted in his early movies like Darr, and Baazigar. Yet despite this, when a friend of mine once casually said he didn’t like SRK, the whole room gasped in shock. It’s a gasp that Bhattacharya explains in her book thus —  “Shahrukh Khan is not a feminist icon, but a female one.” As readers, we are compelled to understand that Khan isn't a saint or an idol; and contrary to what haters like my friend might think, the book does not describe him as such!  

As a twenty-one-year-old from a small village on the border of Maharashtra who’s working in corporate India, I saw a lot of myself and the women around me in Bhattacharya’s book. In one of her concluding chapters, “An Equilibrium of Silly Expectations,” the author writes “It's impossible to grow up a woman in India without knowing what it is like to always seek permission to be yourself.” This is a feeling I know all too well. Growing up in a village in India, going to a nearby town, or meeting friends for me was never a simple decision — it always needed permission, a reason, an assurance that I wouldn’t be out too long. Even now, things like traveling alone or booking my tickets independently are fraught with questions and considerations, and managing the expectations of my loved ones. It’s not a battle; just the way things are.

In my village, I saw that public spaces belonged to men. They sat at the chowk claiming it as their own, while women learned to shrink themselves and to take the longer and dirtier route just to avoid their gaze. It wasn’t just about space. It was about power – who gets to exist freely and who is pushed to the margins. I always thought my experiences as a young woman in the village were singular, mainly because while self-expression was a privilege, I grew up in a not-so-conservative family. My peers had far less freedom. Reading Shrayana Bhattacharya’s book, I realised that these experiences were in fact not limited to me. Similar to mine, there are patterns of women aspiring for freedom which are backed by research and lived by women across class and geography. For me, Bhattacharya’s research validates the invisible weight of being a woman in India.  

What I loved most about Desperately Seeking Shahrukh, was how none of the women profiled in it come from the same socio-economic background. While it would've been easier to include the stories of women living in different cities in the book, it would never do justice to the women of rural India, who don't get to occupy spaces in public as much as their urban counterparts do. This was a shift I observed in my late teen years, when I moved to Mumbai to study. Here, I saw women in cafés, libraries, and late-night trains – freedoms that felt distant in my village. 

The book captures this urban-rural divide from the perspective of women with nuance. It does so by dividing the book in three sections. The first section introduces us to Shahrukh Khan, the star, and what he means to women in tier-1 cities. In this chapter we hear from Vidya, the author's friend and an upper-caste Brahmin engineer; a friend she only identifies as a “Rajput philosopher,” and the author herself. This section explores the experiences of upper-class, upper-caste women and their struggle to find romance as successful, educated, and independent individuals. These are women who, by virtue of their ambition, disrupt social norms and are seen as a threat to the patriarchal model where the man is expected to be the breadwinner. 

The second section features two women, an unnamed ambitious accountant and “Gold,” a flight attendant. Both women are the first in their families to work and earn their own money. The core of their stories is not just the struggle for financial independence, but also how families react to women who dare to step outside traditional ideas of what women should do. This part of the book felt deeply personal. I know what it’s like to fight for every inch of freedom and to negotiate over the smallest permissions. As I start earning, I feel my hometown trailing behind me. I see myself in these women the most –  in their need to break free, not just from their narrow gullies, but also from the narrowness of imagination.  

The last section of the book takes an intersectional look at womanhood, bringing together stories of women from some of the most vulnerable communities in India, including Adivasi women, Muslim women, and migrant workers from low-income states like West Bengal. These women have found ways to earn money, not necessarily by stepping out of their homes, but by fitting work into the boundaries of their homes.  From women like Zahira, who escaped domestic abuse in Ahmedabad; to Manju who found herself in a quiet struggle to find meaning in her life post-marriage, we meet and learn about women for whom survival in itself might be an act of resistance. In Desperately Seeking Shahrukh, the stories of these women, and the economic context of their lives, paint a painfully familiar picture.

Bhattacharya describes India as a “sisterhood of desperate and disappointed women.” I love that she is deeply unapologetic while describing the gloomy state of women in India. She contextualises the experiences of many young Indian women and provides numbers and research to show how women’s lives are inextricably linked with economics.  I couldn’t help but think about how, in one way or another, my life has always been under watch, whether it was the quiet scrutiny of neighbours in my village, or the unspoken rules that still dictate where I can go and what I can do. Women in this country, including me, live their lives with heavy surveillance and curbs on our autonomy. This line comforted me with the idea of “sisterhood;” and yet left me angry. 

In Desperately Seeking Shahrukh, I could see reflections of the women in my family –  women who worked on farms, my childhood friends, women I met in college, and my colleagues at work. And while not all of them might be SRK stans, I bet, just like my mother, sister, and I, all of them have danced to that one song.

Mere khwaabon mein jo aaye? Womanhood, camaraderie, and joy.

Text by Yukta Chaudhari. 

Yukta is an intersectional queer feminist artist, writer, and marketing consultant at the DEI Lab. They believe in the power of the written word to drive positive change, crafting stories and campaigns that amplify diverse voices. Yukta is always in pursuit of a more inclusive world—one word at a time.