Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence

by Shrayana Bhattacharya

Daydreams, posters and cinema tickets signal hidden peeves and protestations.

Shah Rukh also appears more ‘middle class’ than the other two Khans. Sociologists have written countless books and papers on how he personifies the neoliberal ethic, an example of how to ‘make it’ in India’s mythical meritocracy, rising to the top in a nepotistic industry.

The isolated islands of Andaman and Nicobar report the second highest share of Shah Rukh searches in the country, after West Bengal.

Coimbatore is easier to explain, home to one of India’s largest garment zones and, closer to my heart, it is one of just three cities in the country to report more Google searches for Shah Rukh than Salman.

They highlight how families desire control over women’s bodies and mobility to maintain the purity of their caste networks. Such control is a key reason why women’s employment opportunities are minimized; the ultimate goal is to reduce any chance of boyfriends or workplace romances from taboo communities.

In fact, a key theory explaining the decline in female employment in India centres on how economic growth has made it possible for millions of families to practise conservative values by withdrawing women from paid jobs. Sociologists call this the ‘Sanskritization’ effect. Higher incomes allow family members to perform puritanical upper-caste social rituals where women’s bodily honour is guarded strictly within the home. As incomes increase, families no longer need more members to work in order to stay afloat and women are discouraged from working outside.

In my early thirties, I finally understood that many of the straight men my age, those who operated outside the arranged-marriage market, had been socialized into desiring women who were cheerleaders or status symbols. I stopped blaming these men for their romantic choices, realizing that we were all victims of our unequal society and circumstances.

India is busy modernizing for its men. Women occupy a different experience. As per the India Human Development Survey in 2012, eighty per cent of Indian women need approval from a family member to go outside the home to visit a health centre. Three out of five women need permission to visit the local grocery store. In 2015, only forty-seven per cent of urban women could go unchaperoned to a public space.

In urban areas, forty-one per cent of adolescent girls felt unsafe in local markets, while nearly half feared using public transport. Only a third of urban women ‘dared’ to venture out to local markets alone. Most families and men felt young women could be kept safe by simply abdicating their right to enjoy public space. The study observed, ‘As many as half of the young men and parents of adolescent girls surveyed felt that the best way for girls to be safe was that they avoid certain public spaces altogether, or that they should simply avoid going out after dark.’

suicide rates amongst young Indian women have reached an all-time high. Thirty-seven per cent of all women who died by suicide in the world are Indian; the suicide rate for Indian women is twice the global average. Psychological tests measuring female agency—the degree to which women feel they have control over their lives and can actuate their ambitions—show worrying trends across class and caste groups.