Bollywood star Jim Sarbh on playing the ‘Father of India’s nuclear programme’ in ‘Rocket Boys’
In his upcoming web series, Sarbh plays the Indian nuclear physicist Dr Homi Bhabha
Indian actor Jim Sarbh’s upcoming web series ‘Rocket Boys’ on Sony Liv attempts to humanise the lives of two intellectual giants Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Dr Homi J Bhabha.
These two ace nuclear physicists were the chief architects of the Indian Space Program and the eight-episode series starring Ishwak Singh as Sarabhai and Sarbh as Bhabha will chronicle their eventful lives, filled with great scientific discoveries while also taking a look at how their friendship evolved with time.
These two brilliant minds were like a couple of spatial rock stars in post-Independent India, but it’s their humane story that Sarbh felt was the gravitational pull.
“When you read about Homi Bhabha, you realise that he was extremely creative and had vibrant personality. He had wicked sense of humour and had the right mix of sophistication, charm, and irreverence. He wasn’t a socially-awkward genius who couldn’t deal with people,” said Sarbh in an interview with Gulf News.
The trailer shows Sarbh playing the scientist with a mixture of sophistication, ingenuity, and sass, while actor Singh of ‘Pataal Lok’ fame plays his eager protege.
“‘Rocket Boys’ is an emotional series that document their approaches to life. It’s the personal journey of these two intellectual giants. You are seeing the real people behind their greatness. Remember, even a great painter like Picasso had to buy a pair of socks,” said Sarbh with a laugh.
Just like his latest role Bhabha, Sarbh has Parsi roots and seems to share the same worldliness like the protagonist. Sarbh is a seasoned actor who has featured in the web series ‘Made In Heaven’ and hit period saga ‘Padmaavat’ and thriller ‘Neerja’.
Directed by Abhay Pannu, ‘Rocket Boys’ also stars Regina Cassandra, Rajat Kapur, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Saba Azad, and Arjun Radhakrishnan in pivotal roles. Excerpts from our interview with Sarbh as his show gears up for a world premiere on February 4 on Sony Liv:
Should a person who isn’t particularly good at science or math like me be intimidated by your series?
I don’t think you should have any such fear. The makers have done such a fantastic job of phrasing it in a way that’s easy to understand for a layman to understand the series. It’s more about their approach to life than the actual science behind it. At the end of day, we are more attracted to a human being’s approach to life than by the actual things that they’ve done.
The actual things that they’ve done may have paved the way for the science of the country, but you are drawn to their human story. When you watch a sports biopic you’re not like: ‘Oh, my God, I can never jump in the way that this guy jumps or I can’t fight in the way that he fights’. Here you too can’t understand science the way that they can understand the science, but you can definitely understand their approach to life, their tenacity, and the relentlessness that drive their intellects.
Tell us more about playing Dr Homi J. Bhabha, the late Indian nuclear physicist who is often credited as the ‘father of the Indian nuclear program’. He was a Parsi from a cultured and well-connected family and so are you. Did your roots help you play the role better?
There are certain things you understand about the character without having to think too much about it. It felt like a familiar territory and a familiar world. Homi Bhabha was very much a man of the world. He was educated at Cambridge, travelled all over the world for diplomatic relations, and had political/scientific connections. He had conversations with some of the leading Nobel Laureates of his time such as Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and [J Robert] Oppenheimer. He has lived in many other countries and like him, I have travelled a fair amount myself. In a way, I felt I could fit in. Plus, we both are Indian and we want to be here … We both want to contribute to our society in whatever way we can. He did it in an astounding way. He was a genius and I am just a [expletive] actor. But it was equally tough. But that guy was a genius.
You are right... He wasn’t geeky in the traditional sense.
He was a very charismatic, irreverent, charming figure. We have heard about his sensitivity and that he was a very good teacher and a good leader. He was one of those greatest minds of his time. His mind worked a bit faster than everybody else in the room. Nine out of 10 times, I found such people funny and charming … But I am not saying that he wasn’t moody.
So the show will acquaint us with two great minds …
This show chronicles the lives of Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Dr Homi J Bhabha and how they split ways. Homi Bhabha was Dr Sarabhai’s mentor when they started out. They were both working in the same Cosmic Rays unit, which looked into explorations of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, and they were both trying to study the cosmic rays and what secrets they held. They wanted to discover new particles, learn more about radiation, and cosmic rays unit offered these opportunities. But Homi Bhabha decided at one point that he wanted to go into nuclear fission, while Vikram Sarabhai stayed with space exploration.
They parted ways in terms of their contributions towards science, but they stayed friends throughout their entire lives. It must be lonely for a person whose brain is moving faster than the other people in the room. But with each other they found people who the brains were working at the same speed, and they both could constantly challenge and enrich each other’s lives. Plus, they faced immense challenges in their line of work. Historically, India was a new country where we just got our independence. They didn’t have the resources nor the right amount of money for their research. But they had to achieve their goals, despite all those obstacles.
Do web shows like ‘Rocket Boys’ give an actor more liberty to perform?
Yes, we have the liberty of time and we can show different shades of a character at different points in their lives in a web series. We get so many scenes to pick from. You don’t have to show everything in the first bit. A web series allows a more mercurial, a more human representation of someone. He’s not a cardboard cutout. The biggest challenge of this series is to humanise great people with brilliant minds. They don’t think of themselves as great and they are just trying to solve problems, but the world saw them differently.
So what kind of legwork was involved to play Dr Homi Bhabha?
We kept reading and re-reading the scenes with my director Abhay Pannu and we did workshops that explored different approaches to the same scene. We always wondered how we must show a confident, extremely intelligent person as vulnerable … We wondered when they are charming, rough, or when their temper got better off them … We also explored how somebody whose opinion that you value immensely can hurt you and each other with careless words and careless opinions. Their friendship was wonderful, but they had the power to hurt each other too.
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‘Rocket Boys’ will stream on Sony Liv on February 4
