ROCKET BOY

Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy's biography of Homi J. Bhabha tries to tease out the man behind the myth-in remarkable detail

- Shabnam Minwalla

HOMI J. BHABHA

A Life

by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy

RUPA & CO

When Jehangir and Meherbai Bhabha visited Paris in 1913, they added an unconventional stop to their itinerary. Worried that their four-year-old son slept too little, they took him to a famous paediatrician. After meeting little Hormusji, the doctor cancelled his other appointments and spent time chatting with his new patient. He told the Bhabhas that their son had an extraordinarily active brain that made sleep difficult. Given the right environment, the boy would grow up a genius.

In Homi J. Bhabha: A Life, Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy tells the tale of the boy-with-theactive-brain, who grew up to become a renowned physicist and the father of India's nuclear energy programme. While Bhabha is a familiar and feted figure in India-popping up in school textbooks and lists of great Indians-this sprawling biography seeks the man behind the official memory.

Dadabhoy also attempts to use Bhabha's life as a "vehicle for telling the story of Indian science" and tracing the "trajectory of India in the twentieth century". He painstakingly recreates lost times recounting the history of the Parsi community, delving into abstruse scientific concepts, and describing the bitter politics that plagued the scientific community in India.