For his fans, Shah Rukh’s films and interviews mean whatever they want them to mean: he becomes an archive of all that remains unattainable in banal personal lives; or a call to freedom for working-class fangirls; or a self-help guru for self-helping-women; a soppy balm to soothe the rough-and-tumble of an ordinary female life full of struggle, surveillance and tactical bargaining; an urge to explore bodies and their sexual appetites; or he can serve as the symbol of a metaphysical absence.
