Bhabha scattering: a shout-out for Rocket Boys

Wrote this short review of the fine new series Rocket Boys, for Reader’s Digest
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You don’t expect a laugh-out-loud moment from a discussion about nuclear war – unless you’re watching a black satire like Dr Strangelove. But that’s what happens in one of many memorable scenes in the new series Rocket Boys, a dramatized account of India’s space and nuclear programmes and the physicists who made it possible. It’s 1962, and amidst the chaos of the Chinese invasion of Indian territory, Homi Bhabha (played by Jim Sarbh) is trying to persuade Prime Minister Nehru (Rajit Kapoor) that India must enter the global arms race. Nehru – initially sticking to the principle that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – expresses concern that Bhabha might be using their close relationship for his own personal agenda. To which an exasperated Homi explodes: “What will I personally do with an atom bomb, Bhai? Bury it in my backyard? Keep it in the Homi Atomic Bhabha Museum?”

Here and elsewhere, Rocket Boys gets much of its energy from Bhabha’s charismatic, witty presence: whether he is bantering with his mother, or making a science joke (“Bhabha scattering” he quips when his appearance leads to a group of students nervously dispersing like particles), or losing his temper when an unexpected glitch appears on the day of a reactor launch. In the acclaimed web-series Chernobyl, a scientist describes the processes by which stability is maintained inside a nuclear reactor, with the reactivity increased and reduced in turn. (“This is the invisible dance that powers entire cities without smoke or flame. And it is beautiful.”) Sarbh’s excellent performance serves a comparable function for Rocket Boys – it supplies both the necessary power and the lighter, moderating moments. He is well supported by the more low-key Ishwak Singh, who plays the other protagonist – Vikram Sarabhai, whose path first crossed with Bhabha’s in the early 1940s, leading to a friendship and association that was (at least in this telling) sometimes troubled by a clash of ideologies.

Rocket Boys begins by tracing the lives of these two men during the lead-up to India’s independence: early disappointments and pitfalls, tentative collaborations, the setting up of institutes that would help realise the new nation’s ambition of self-reliance. And the personal lives too. It could be argued that the series gets a bit weighed down at one stage as it details the courtship and wedding of Vikram and Mrinalini Sarabhai – but it’s hard to blame the show-runners, given that Mrinalini, a celebrated classical dancer and choreographer, was an important figure in her own right; and that the rockier aspects of this marriage provide a good lens for examining gender roles and feminist struggles in this time and milieu. In any case, both Regina Cassandra as Mrinalini and Saba Azad as Homi’s girlfriend Pipsy are strong and elegant presences. It is also creditable – considering how defensive and controlling the families of public figures tend to be – that Mallika and Kartikeya Sarabhai, who were consultants for this series, had no problem with the depiction of their father’s extra-marital relationship with his colleague, the educator Kamla Chowdhry.

Other famous personalities move across this firmament too: Nobel laureate CV Raman, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, and an earnest young scientist named APJ Abdul Kalam who plays a big role in the later episodes. Some incidents are fictionalised, or at least heavily dramatized; one important character is a composite of various real-life figures who were Bhabha’s rivals and may have been jealous of his connections. But to its credit, Rocket Boys, even while it presents Bhabha and Sarabhai as heroes for a young country, never glosses over their social privileges. Its depiction of Nehru is pragmatic and layered too: on one hand he is shown as a conscientious, self-examining leader, a man of progress genuinely encouraging the scientific spirit; on the other hand, in his interactions with Homi there is a sense of a cushy insiders’ club at work. All this raises the show above easy categories of “liberal”, “conservative”, “elitist”, “pro-Congress” or “anti-Nehru” – it is, foremost, a well-designed narrative about the many vagaries of history, politics and development. And it makes physics seem exciting, which is an achievement in its own right.

P.S. this is a comment I wrote in response to a question on Facebook, about the alleged inaccuracies in the show as well as the politics of creating a fictional antagonist (Raza Mehdi) who resents Homi Bhabha’s success and who happens to be Muslim:

I think it's very useful to have information about the inaccuracies in a dramatised historical series (I read similar very critical pieces about Chernobyl and The Crown, two shows that I liked better than Rocket Boys) - it can be illuminating and can open doors to further reading about the subject if you're that way inclined. And a viewer should never be so naive as to take everything in a historical series at face value anyway. Though at the same time it's good to be aware that the people who are pointing out the "inaccuracies" or "problems" also often have their own biases and blind spots (or in some cases might be too close to or too emotionally invested in the subject - as a nuclear physicist nitpicking about the technical flaws in Chernobyl would be; or an anti-monarchist raging about what they interpret as a sympathetic depiction of a royal).
About the Raza Mehdi character in Rocket Boys: I am still unsure why they felt the need to fictionalise Meghnad Saha (what I heard was that Mehdi wasn't based on a single figure but was a composite). But personally I didn't think there was anything conniving about making him a Muslim, because I didn't see him as a "villain" at all: I thought he was depicted largely as a sympathetic, sincere character, and some scenes -- like the one in the Parliament where he questions if this really is a democracy -- were geared towards making the viewer think about the elitist circle surrounding Nehru. (In fact, in the very first scene where Nehru appears in episode 4, where Mehdi goes up to him at the party and Nehru is clearly being distant with him, even fobbing him off, I found myself feeling sorry for Mehdi - and even wondered if the show was going to make villains of Nehru and his coterie.)
Anyway, at the very end of the show, the true "betrayal" (if one has to think in hero-villain binaries) comes from elsewhere, right? Not from the Muslim character.