Home > Author > Shrayana Bhattacharya
1 " These women relied on Shah Rukh when they found the real world and all its pandemics and practicalities inhospitable. Because only the deepest dissatisfaction with reality drives us to dwell in fantasy. "
― Shrayana Bhattacharya , Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence
2 " Fantasizing about an impossibly idealized kind of love they’d seen an actor perform on-screen. Yet, all their real-world efforts were extremely pragmatic, often sacrificing the love they fantasized about as a price for earning status, security, and financial freedom. "
3 " Critics often say that DDLJ, with its emphasis on patriarchal permission for young love, discourages dissent. This argument narrows the space for dissent by legitimizing it only in its most blatant, combative form, demanding that dissent always be obvious and 'out there' in full view of TV cameras and Twitter. So, no act of protest short of elopement, short of the most radical rejection of family, would suffice. Demanding such all-or-nothing actions doesn't account for the costs that eloping and actively abandoning their families would impose on women from any economic strata. The way we express resistance is subject to our own personal calculus of risk and reward. "
4 " For all the sorrows and joys of love depicted in Hindi cinema, men and women are rarely seen talking to each other about the terms of their love and intimacy. They recite poetic praise for their beloved, sing songs, dance in coordination, hold hands and perform soft porn, but remain comically squeamish when it comes to conversing about sex. "
5 " If the sex is good, it’s tough to walk away. Because sex is so important, yaar. It’s the only good kind of attention men can give women. But most boys in India don’t know what to do, and most girls I know don’t know how to enjoy it. No one tells us about it, we can only learn from porn, and that doesn’t show what we women like. It’s made for boys mostly, and I think it’s just teaching them to keep attacking our bodies in bed! "
6 " Expecting a woman in this landscape to demonstrate dissent by cutting ties with her family—the only institution that provides her material security in the absence of a supportive state or an inclusive market that values her labour—is, perhaps, asking for too much. "
7 " A woman on celluloid is always the Beauty, the Bitch or the Bechari, never even our own muddled desi Bridget Jones. "
8 " We leave partners using the framework of opportunity costs as we’re convinced there are better options out there; we lose weight to become more appealing and raise our value in the marketplace. We maintain beauty because attractiveness is an endowment, which improves one’s chances of finding love. "
9 " Our tryst with global modernity enables new choices and norms that create their own problems and their own solutions. The opportunity to study, work and find your own partner exposes us to the harsh markets for mates and monies. Philosophers tell us that capitalism has made us all complicit in our own commoditization. Love, as much as labour, has become an object of trade and exchange value—circulating in a marketplace, compelling us to become slaves to the rational logic of incentives, costs and scarcity. "
10 " In its most common usage, maryada, or modesty, connotes social traditions and boundaries, the mores and norms a woman must abide by to earn love and respect from her family and immediate community. "
11 " In commenting on how films sell fantasy in India, scholars often draw links between the income poverty of the country and the on-screen displays of hyper-consumption and excessive wealth. These are meant to project the neoliberal aspirations of a growing middle class and its desire to at once uphold community traditions and encourage individualism. Simultaneously, the images are intended to enchant and distract the masses from their everyday drudgery. "
12 " Maryada maps the boundaries of what is appropriate or ‘normative behaviour’ for a woman, what she ought to do and be, demarcating the possibilities for her spirit and self. "
13 " Indians are the most depressed people in the world and women are fifty per cent more likely to suffer episodes of depression than men. "
14 " Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable … Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, to ‘win friends and influence people’. As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal. "
15 " Big-budget romantic Hindi films rarely accede that a sexual encounter between decent people may simply be for pleasure or play, that sex may never lead to love or marriage. "
16 " I am one of those women your friends talk about. You know, the woman from the infamous refrain, ‘So many great single women but so very few great single men.’ At work, I am competent and composed. At love, I am a fumbling failure. "
17 " This book isn’t about Shah Rukh Khan. Rather, I hope to reveal how female fans use his icon to talk about themselves. Their stories will illustrate how his films, songs and interviews are invoked to frame a feminine conversation on inequality within families, workplaces and contemporary romances. "
18 " Even in 2018, eighty per cent of victims of reported kidnapping and abduction cases were women. Between 2001 and 2017, data published by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau showed that ‘love’ was a far more frequent reason for the murder of women than terrorism. Beyond honour killings, it remains common for us to read reports of young single women being murdered for simply rejecting the romantic overtures of men interested in them. "
