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

by Shrayana Bhattacharya

Through our journey, Vibha talked non-stop. She told me how she was top of her statistics class, how she had many followers on social media, how she had organized for girls from her college to be present at the protest. She struck me as a person composed of appetites and ambitions—desperate to taste the world. Eventually, she made a familiar request, one I had grown accustomed to hearing from north Indian women returning from public spaces—‘Please don’t tell our family that you met us at the protest. We had said we were going to the mall.’ ‘Papa did not give me permission to attend the protest,’ Vibha said. ‘But it was important for me to be there. All my friends from college were going, I had urged them to come. As women, we needed to walk together. My mother agreed to join. It’s sad we had to lie, but what else could we do?’