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

by Shrayana Bhattacharya

under the weight of his own potential. A simple and decent man, his love life is steeped in the robotic rituals of serial monogamy.

But look around us in Delhi—the ugliest men are with the loveliest women, and the women are insecure.

Somehow, her American university income allows her a clean conscience, while everyone with a good private sector salary is a stooge of neo-liberal capitalism who needs to constantly feel shame.’

In 2017, as in 1993, nearly seventy-one per cent of urban Indian women between the ages of thirty and thirty-four were engaged solely in unpaid housework.

I think he would do more if I asked him for help. But I feel guilty to ask as well. I know it’s strange and not very feminist, but I feel like I’m failing if I ask him to do my job.’

Her frustration wasn’t ironic or humorous, it was the frustration of a student discovering surprise sections on an exam she had to ace.

‘There can be no better instance of inferiority complex than Mrs Kamaladevi’s objection to the word “protection”. I do not understand what is humiliating in “protection”.’

Witnessing these deeply private rebellions, I struggle to find solidarity with the vociferous internet sloganeering on ‘smashing’ the patriarchy. Because the feminism I’ve seen knows you must chip away at social structures every day.