On our table at the Aquarius poolside restaurant of The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, actor Shah Rukh Khan dominates the conversation. Writer-economist Shrayana Bhattacharya, who we are here to meet, teases the mid-day photographer, “Please, take good pictures… you never know, Shah Rukh might see.” It’s been over half a year since her book Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh—already a bestseller—made it to bookshelves, and just about two months since her fortuitous visit to Mannat to meet the incidental subject of her book. “I am very happy to report that I didn’t faint. He is really presidential,” she shares. On June 25, when Khan, Bollywood’s undisputed Baadshah, completed 30 years in the movies, Bhattacharya was among those who celebrated it with her two bits on social media: “An artist whose images and interviews changed the way I approach economics, writing, social science research, gender studies and myself. He is more than a ‘star’, he is a universe of concepts and meaning,” she wrote, with the hashtag #pictureabhibaakihain.  

Bhattacharya tells us now, how she dislikes words like “star-struck”—often used callously for the actor’s admirers—to describe her work as a social scientist. “I am too ordinary a fan,” she confesses. What she was purely interested in, is telling the story of “what happened to women in post-liberalisation India”. “India is one of the few countries where as we have grown [economically], women’s employment drastically declined. Today, we are at the bottom five [when it comes to women’s employment],” says Bhattacharya. “I wanted the reader to understand data, the different explanations, the technical substance of it, but of course, I wanted to do it in a way which would not bore them to death. It had to be interesting and accessible, and I was very committed to that for a long period of time.” As luck would have it, SRK came into the picture.