Jim Sarbh wants to talk about his cat. The actor has a snuggly white calico cat, Mimi, whom he rescued during the lockdown. She later accompanied him on the shoots for Rocket Boys. "Thankfully, some of the hotels we stayed at were pet-friendly. They converted the room and took out the carpet so Mimi could be with me," Jim recalls.
She's proved quite the lucky charm, too. Rare for a Hindi web series, Rocket Boys has succeeded entirely on its own terms. The eight-episode series chronicles the friendship and parallel journeys of pioneering Indian scientists Homi J Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai.
As Homi, Jim is delightfully unhinged. Told by CV Raman that the Japanese are cutting off India's rubber supplies, he simply asks, "Shall I commit hara-kiri?" It's a thorough, well-etched portraiture, by turns witty, unpredictable and self-assertive against all odds.
"Everything I'd heard about Homi said he was in equal measures sophisticated, gentlemanly, mercurial, intelligent, charming, moody, and funny," Jim says. In the show, we catch him playing a violin, and addressing Jawaharlal Nehru as 'bhai'.
The actor's ease with English and Parsi came in handy for the role. Still, it's not an exact recreation of the famous physicist's voice - as evinced by recordings such as his 1955 UN Conference address. "I was relieved we didn't have to do the old-timey voices. In reality, his speaking style would have been closer to Nehru’s. But we obviously dropped that for clarity," Jim admits.
In an early scene, Homi explains the significance of cosmic rays to an awed classroom. He assembles a Wilson cloud chamber to show radiation tracks - the idea popped up while writer-director Abhay Pannu was wondering how best to convey Homi's passion for particle physics.
"Before the hadron collider, this is how research was done," Abhay says. "We discovered it could be shown in a DIY class experiment way. Homi always thought of science as a creative discipline," Jim adds.
In Rocket Boys, Jim is flanked by Ishwak Singh as Vikram Sarabhai. It's a contrasting role but by no means a bland one. "The lunatic brown kid is blowing up the courtyard again," scoffs a professor at Cambridge, and Ishwak's studied, measured performance switches comfortably between curiosity and indignation. The founder of India’s space program is shown as a man of grounded values and sensibilities.
A rift is introduced - then resolved as Vikram comes to accept Homi’s push for India's nuclearization. "The key stone of their edifice was the same. What was different is how they applied it," Ishwak says poetically.
This synergy of opposites is also felt in the characters' personal relationships. Mrinalini Sarabhai was a renowned classical dancer who married Vikram in 1942.
Early in their courtship, she chastises him for dissing William Cameron Menzies’s silent classic Things to Come. Later, she voices her desire to teach Bharatanatyam, a life-long passion that culminated in them founding the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad.
"This whole amalgamation of science and arts is what struck a chord between them. Through her dance, Mrinalini brought forth social issues like dowry deaths in pre and post independence India. She was more than Vikram Sarabhai's wife," says Regina Cassandra, who plays Mrinalini Sarabhai.
Rocket Boys' weakest link, perhaps, is its portrayal of the secondary characters. APJ Abdul Kalam turns up in expectedly heart-tugging fashion. But the show's other Muslim, an embittered Bengali physicist named Raza Mehdi (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), is a hard one to buy. Not only is the character entirely fictional, but the emphasis on his Muslim identity creates a false binary with Homi, who is shown as progressive and nation-minded.
"More than religion, I wanted to highlight the class divide between these two scientists. The show plays on certain preconceived notions we tend to have towards Muslim characters. By the end, though, he's revealed to be a patriot," says Abhay, explaining his intentions behind Raza Mehdi.
Perhaps season 2 will clarify the motives better. There's also the thorny business of Homi's death - purportedly, as the show suggests, at the hands of the CIA. "We are sticking as close to facts as possible to fill the gaps in history," Abhay asserts.
Rocket Boys is streaming on SonyLIV.