The desi brothers in (nuclear) arms!

Easily the most provocative paneldiscussion moment Irsquove witnessed involved The Hindu newspaperrsquos N Ram speaking among journalists at the Ramnath Goenka Awards in 2006 in DelhiIn the audience were among others A P J Abdul Kalam then Indiarsquos President Kalam was on his way out of the hall but stopped summarily to pick up the mic and deliver his two cents on what he thought of the topic before the panelmdashwhich mustrsquove been along the usual lines media versus pressures versus ethics etcIrsquom entirely paraphrasing here Kalam suggested to top journalists on the podium that while they must pursue truth it was their responsibility being Indians to push the nationrsquos agendaTo which Ram retorted that there really was no common national agenda For instance he looked straight into the eyes of L K Advani in the hall to say the mandir was his agendaTo Kalam he said building a bomb may be ldquoyour agendardquomdashbut it neednrsquot be Ramrsquos as in his publicationrsquos Canrsquot recall if the audience clapped A relatively young fellow myself I was impressed by this breezy audacityLikewise to build the nuclear bomb or not is the question central to the strikingly sincere smart sensible sorted series Rocket Boys more so its Season 2 S02 that dropped recently on Sony LIVAnd a much younger Kalammdashin the form of a similarly sweetlooking actor Arjun Radhakrishnanmdashengages in the same debateAlso Read The honest truth about lying kidsThis time with Vikram Sarabhai his mentor at Indiarsquos space programme Only that Homi Bhabha the architect of the nationrsquos nuclear energy capability is no moreBhabha was for the bomb As is Kalam Sarabhai Bhabharsquos replacement is a lsquopeacenikrsquomdashsee the nincompooptype words we reserve for those batting against mass human annihilationKalam in the series says ldquoWar doesnrsquot determine whorsquos right but whorsquos leftrdquo Sarabhai is sternmdashnot going for the bomb As was Jawaharlal Nehru Which the showBhabha argues cost India the 1962 China warTo be fair since complete nuclear disarmament by the worldrsquos top possessors including China is impossible Bhabharsquos point is simple ldquoEqual power ensures peacerdquo Whatrsquos getting in the way CIA WhollyOver the same issue American spies according to Rocket Boys are the reason behind serious highprofile upheavals including Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastrirsquos death That they couldnrsquot prevent Indiarsquos first nuclear test still in 1974 is wellknown The operation was executed as an incredibly elaborate secret drill ducking satellites the worksYou see almost a repeat of that in the decent John Abrahamstarrer Parmanu 2018 on Indiarsquos second set of nuclear tests of 1998 Vivek Agnihotrirsquos sleeper superhit The Tashkent Files 2019 is similarly on conspiracy theories behind Shastrirsquos demiseBoth stand nowhere near Rocket Boys mainly because of the kinda credibility the series earns as you go on watching it first episode onwardsItrsquos hardly ever about the storymdashall in the telling of it isnrsquot it And so it doesnrsquot bother us that the character with the maximum nuisance value in SO1 Raza Dibyendu Ghosh and S02 Mathur K C Shankar thatrsquos my dost from junior school guysmdashare altogether frickinrsquo fictitiousWe do know from Vinod Mehtarsquos fab book Lucknow Boy that Y B Chavan one of Indiarsquos top ministers at the time was a CIA mole Thatrsquos not clear in this show thoughAnd yet the heroes Bhabha shining with Jim Sarbh and Sarabhai subdued with Ishwak Singh are obviously real Itrsquos not the same thing as concocting a steady companionlike friend Pipsy Saba Azad for Bhabha Someone like her did possibly exist We are looking at fake villains here which make for the essential conflict hence the entire storyThis doesnrsquot bother us I guess because of what Rocket Boys is about Science yes But not in terms of pioneering inventorsdiscoverers As it is there arenrsquot many of those in modern India a badly cast Dev Patel has gone and destroyed onemdashmathematician Ramanujan on global screen alreadyRocket Boys is playground for Indiarsquos institution builders Kamla Chaudhary Neha Chauhan IIM Mrinalini Sarabhai Regina Cassandra Darpana Academy of Performing Arts Bhabha BARC TIFR Sarabhai ISRO even Krishi Darshan on DD Nehru of course Itrsquos about legacyHow many Indian institutions of the same calibre can we name from the past 40 years Wersquove begun to celebrate anniversaries of bars and restaurants latelyAnd thatrsquos what makes Rocket Boys as a subject more refreshing than the usual big boys with grand biopics Sorry if Irsquove made it sound like a government documentItrsquos so engagingly filmed as the best of rsquoem allmdashsample one of the climax sequences for instance cut fourways between Bhabha Mathur Raza Sarabhai hands down Best Editing Award materialThe series is writtendirected by Abhay Pannu created by Nikkhil Advani Advani is a Bollywood veteran Donrsquot know why Pannu isnrsquot getting lauded more for a rare Indian series that will universally stand the scrutiny of time even if S01gtS02 How does one carry on something like this ifonce the protagonists are goneAh there is always Kalam If therersquos a S03 I hope the lsquoPeoplersquos Presidentrsquo is soberly critiqued as wellmdashthe way Ram could in real life Whatrsquos the point otherwiseMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper