WATCH HIS SPACE

Basking success in the of Rocket Boys 2, in which he plays Dr Vikram Sarabhai, Ishwak Singh continues the pursuit of finding his "voice"

- PUJA AWASTHI

Beneath his still rising star, Ishwak Singh is equal parts a lover of poetry and philosophy, as he is of architecture and books. And a romantic. But we shall return to that.

Currently basking in the success of Rocket Boys 2 (Sony LIV)—a series in which he plays Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space research programme—Singh has an innate gentleness to him. Much like the character he plays. That gentleness, though, hides a steely determination. As it does the aching need to find one’s voice.

Though he has been on screen since 2013 (Raanjhanaa), Singh, 38, first gripped our consciousness in Paatal Lok (2020), with a role that made him navigate what it means to be a Muslim in these times. The common thread between that character and Sarabhai in Rocket Boys is idealism.

Is he an idealist in real life, too? “It is difficult to encapsulate a character in absolute terms,” he says. “To me, they were honourable men doing their work with great seriousness. I saw Imran Ansari (Paatal Lok) as a good cop, but there were many layers to him. Dr Sarabhai’s world was so large and diverse that it is difficult to condense it in a word. But his edifice was that he was a man of science.”

That edifice became the one-note concept that drove Singh through the role. “Whenever at a crossroads, he took decisions based on science,” he says. “That became my motivation whenever I had to make a choice about how to approach a scene.”