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The biopic, a popular sub-genre in Hindi cinema over the last decade, has profiled sportsmen, leaders and even gangsters, but largely ignored Indian scientists. Rocket Boys, centered on the personal and professional lives of scientists Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam who later became President of India, is a refreshing change and therefore to be welcomed. Unfortunately, the Sony Liv series created by Nikhil Advani and written and directed by Abhay Pannu, has missed out on a wonderful opportunity, taking creative license to such extremes that it becomes more desi science fiction than an authentic rendering of their lives and work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The series purports to tell the story of the founding of India’s atomic energy and space programs through the lives of its founders, Bhabha and Sarabhai. (Kalam is introduced in the first season but one suspects that the second season which is yet to be released will focus largely on him.) Widely publicized as a "true” story, a disclaimer claims that it is a fictionalized account. Hailed by reviewers as educative, illuminating and informative, the series has so many distortions and misrepresentations that it becomes incumbent to set the record straight. In fact, the disclaimer should have claimed that it is a purely fictionalized account with a few facts thrown in. The creative liberty taken with basic facts of history completely destroys the credibility of the series.
Bhabha’s and Sarabhai’s stories are compelling in themselves and never lack a strong narrative thrust. And their lives provide a good vehicle for telling the story of Indian science and the foundations of India’s atomic energy and space programs. Thus, it is inexplicable why the makers of this series have tried to make a dramatic story even more dramatic by introducing fictional characters such as the Shia Muslim Raza Mehdi (loosely based on the brilliant Bengali scientist Meghnad Saha), falsifying dates and portraying a serious scientist like Bhabha as having absurd derring-do.
The makers probably intended the scene where Bhabha, dives into the "swimming pool” reactor Apsara, fully clothed and armed with just, hold your breath, a screwdriver to be one of the more dramatic moments of the episode, if not the series. His aquatic mission is to fix a few control rods that are preventing India’s first research reactor from reaching full power. If it had been a film screened in theaters this scene would have in all probability elicited approving whistles from the audience. Why let a little radiation poisoning get in the way of dramatic effect? The whole idea of attributing such lunacy to the (in real life) portly Bhabha is to say the least absurd.
His screwdriver heroics over, Bhabha emerges unscathed from radiation filled waters, puts on a suit and soaks in all the adulation which comes his way after the reactor achieves criticality in the presence of VIPs like Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The entire effort is presented as an indigenous one, even though the design for the reactor was British and the fuel rods were imported.
The improvisational talents of Indian scientists, their jugaad (a resourceful approach to problem solving), is again on display later in the series when ropes pull up the launching platform during the launch of India’s first space rocket in 1963. But this episode unlike the first has some element of truth in it even if that wasn’t exactly what happened. Just as the Nike-Apache rocket was about to be placed on the launch pad it started tilting because there was a leak in the hydraulic system. The technicians had to physically hold the rocket and place it correctly on the launcher. When the rocket was in position, the remote system to raise the launcher to the correct position malfunctioned. A man was sent to operate the controls on the launcher itself.
Another nonsensical episode which grates is when Bhabha and Sarabhai are seen on the roof of what is supposed to be Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science. They run to pull down the Union Jack and replace it with the Indian flag, just as the Institute’s alleged British benefactors reach the main courtyard. The whole idea is so far-fetched and out of character that it is beyond ridiculous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The series also shows a stormy meeting in Nehru’s office between the Maharaja of Travancore, Nehru and Bhabha. They are discussing Travancore’s thorium-containing monazite deposits. In a preceding scene Bhabha, who has plans of making an atom bomb, tells Sarabhai that he wants Travancore’s thorium reserves. Hammer in hand, and with a malevolent look in his eyes, Bhabha says he will fix the Maharaja for refusing to part with the sands. Subsequently, when Nehru asks the Maharaja to sell the sands at government rates, he refuses haughtily claiming an independent status for Travancore.
A shocked Nehru leaves the room and Bhabha takes over. Bhabha then informs the Maharaja that he knows that Travancore has been selling six times the permitted quantity of monazite to European companies and pocketing the cash. When the Maharaja still does not relent, Bhabha threatens to take over the entire reserves as well as the kingdom. Gesturing a zero, Bhabha says the Maharaja would get the "Aryabhatta’s invention” in compensation. Finally, Bhabha, like a scene out of The Godfather, warns the now shaken royal that many monarchs have been poisoned or even had their heads cut off! At this point, Nehru returns and offers the Maharaja tea. The beaten Maharaja says he is satisfied with Bhabha’s offers and leaves. Nehru and Bhabha look at each other in triumph. What does one make of such theatrical nonsense?
While the Maharaja’s intransigence about the thorium containing monazite deposits is a historical fact, there is no record of any meeting of the kind portrayed having taken place. Besides, the Maharaja was too mild-mannered to have words with anyone, least of all Nehru. It is just as difficult to believe that the suave, urbane and sophisticated Bhabha would threaten anyone with a hammer. There is no record of the Maharaja ever traveling to Delhi before 1949. Also, the meeting between Nehru, Bhabha and the Maharaja is shown as having occurred sometime after August 15, 1947. But Travancore had by then acceded to India (on July 30, 1947) and the royal family had withdrawn resistance.
Perhaps, the most egregious distortion is in making the primary villain a Shia Muslim, in this case the fictional Raza Mehdi, a Calcutta physicist and a CIA collaborator. Short, stocky and dark, Mehdi is so jealous of Bhabha that he’s open to sabotaging his plans. The real life inspiration for this caricature is the outstanding astrophysicist Meghnad Saha who was Bhabha’s equal as a theoretical physicist and famous for the ionization equation which bears his name. Saha’s theory of thermal ionization, which explained the origin of stellar spectra, was an epoch-making discovery and one of India’s greatest contributions to world science in the 20th century.
Saha was as much an institution builder as Sarabhai and Bhabha, and was the founder of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Calcutta, which is now named after him. He built India’s first cyclotron which was inaugurated by Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie in 1950. In the series he is painted as someone who once supported the Muslim League and took funds from Muhammad Ali Jinnah to build his institute of nuclear science in Calcutta. He is supposed to be a nasty person who hates Bhabha. Worse still, he is in cahoots with a CIA officer, a journalist, who is assigned to recruit him.
All this is passed off as creative license. But why would you invent a fictional character with resemblance to a real life stalwart in a narrative which has the pretence of being real (even if dramatized) and uses real names and characters from history? The real story of Sir C. V. Raman, Bhabha, Saha and the physical chemist Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar is a very interesting one and does not need to be bolstered by fictional drivel which plays to the gallery. This is also a clear indication of majoritarian politics creeping into entertainment. This absurd and patently unfair portrayal of a scientist who was a nationalist to the core is inexplicable and reflects the Bollywood disease of "defeating” someone to make the hero look superior. (Bhatnagar, strangely, does not appear in the series at all. Instead, we have another fictional character called Vishwesh Mathur whose role escapes me.)
Saha and Bhabha disagreed over the path India should take in its development. Saha wanted even science to grow from the grassroots; Bhabha, on the other hand was more elitist in his outlook and wanted enclaves of excellence. Saha’s opposition was not to atomic energy as a means of development, but to the strategy adopted by Bhabha for the development of atomic energy and the special status given to him and his clique of scientists.  But regardless of their disagreements and rivalry they both had the deepest respect for each other. 
In 1951, Saha contested the Lok Sabha election from Calcutta as an independent supported by the Left parties and won. In Parliament, he was a vocal critic of Nehru and Bhabha. He pushed newly independent India towards mega river water projects with the Damodar Valley project being his brainchild. He died from a heart attack in 1956 a few months before the nuclear reactor Apsara went critical. So the scene in the series where he shares a drink with Bhabha is improbable. Saha certainly wasn’t a bitter saboteur, and did not narrowly miss getting recruited to a CIA plot to eliminate Bhabha. It is unfortunate that Saha who was a Fellow of the Royal Society and nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics on numerous occasions has been maligned in what pretends to be a "true” account with the makers giving him a negative Muslim avatar. The Saha-Bhabha story is a compelling one, so this ludicrous distortion is completely unwarranted.
Kalam soon makes his appearance to demonstrate the correct way to be a religious minority — a good Muslim. Kalam picks up a model of a rocket in Sarabhai’s office, which reminds Vikram that he has neglected his dream. For much of the series Sarabhai is portrayed as a well-meaning "dreamer.” At the beginning of the series, he is shown arguing with Bhabha who wants to build a bomb. Sarabhai opposes him pointing out the horrors of a nuclear war. Strangely at the end of the first season he does a turnaround with no reason being offered, much to Bhabha’s relief.
Sarabhai, who was married to the classical dancer Mrinalini Swaminathan, is portrayed as a male chauvinist who dissuades her from pursuing her dreams. In reality he supported his wife’s career, looked after the children during her long absences abroad, and co-founded her dance academy, Darpana. As was common knowledge, and as the series shows, he was also unfaithful. His extra-marital relationship with Kamla Chowdhry with whom he built the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad was a source of heartache to all concerned. Bhabha’s affair with a married woman (the unmarried Parwana ‘Pipsy’ Irani in the series but Phiroza ‘Pipsy’ Wadia in real life), was open and without concealment.
Bhabha and Pipsy were known to be an item and went freely into Bombay society as a couple. In fact, Bhabha often insisted that Pipsy also receive an invitation to parties. But the one woman who took precedence over all others was his mother, Meherbai. Both mother and son were very close, something which the series gets right. His relationship with his father Jehangir is shown to be more vexed. This is not true. There is enough evidence in the letters Bhabha wrote to show that theirs was a happy relationship. In a letter which Bhabha wrote to the famous paleobotanist Birbal Sahni after his father’s death, he observed: "He was both an exceptional husband and an exceptional father, and I owe whatever ability I may have to the enormous pains he took to develop any talent I may have possessed as a child.” Jehangir was hardly someone who deserved the epithet used for him in the series.
As far as sets go, the gloomy sepia-toned color scheme is meant to evoke the past but just ends up merely an irritation. Cambridge undergraduates are seen wearing blazers and flannels, attire more suited to a cricket ground. The language of the dialogs which is too contemporary to be credible has anachronistic terms. The absence of honorifics — especially professor and sir — show how little the director understands the milieu he is trying to portray. And the so-called "period” artefacts to lend authenticity have non-black direct-dial telephones.
While the entire discussion thus far has been devoted to exposing the historical inconsistencies and distortions in the series, this should not however be taken to mean that it does not make for interesting viewing. The pace is generally unflagging and it holds your interest almost throughout. Jim Sarbh (Bhabha) and Ishwak Singh (Sarabhai) are well cast and deliver credible performances. They also share an excellent chemistry. Sarbh, as the funny, acerbic scientist is particularly good. Dibyendu Bhattacharya as the villainous Reza Mehdi is also impressive, as is Regina Cassandra who plays Mrinalini Sarabhai.
Those not burdened with knowledge of the true facts will enjoy it even more: it is good entertainment, but poor history. This is why such hybrid series, an unholy mix of fact and fiction, are dangerous: the young generation (and even many adults who know nothing of Indian science history), will think that this was the way things were. The disclaimer at the beginning is all but forgotten. What is difficult to comprehend is why a dramatic series which claims to be an admiring account of eminent scientists from recent history would trivialize their life and achievements. But perhaps it is too much to expect authenticity from entertainers who selectively appropriate history to tell their story. I don’t know what the second season holds but given Kalam’s treatment in the first, one can expect a hagiographic portrayal of the man who was not only one of India’s most eminent rocket scientists, but also a relentless self-promoter.