With my film Space MOMs, I wanted world to know being an Indian is nothing to be ashamed of

The consistently negative portrayal of India and its culture in the West had me disturbed. So I decided to turn my outrage into a positive goal.

Illustration by Soham Sen

In 2014, I set out on a mission: to make it cool to be an Indian. The consistently negative portrayal of India and Indian culture in Western media and entertainment disturbed me. Worse, some in India were copying the same condescension towards our country and its heritage. And so, I decided to take my outrage and turn it into a positive goal: I would make a film that shows the world that being an Indian is nothing to be ashamed of, that our women aren’t all victims and our men are not all mindless barbarians.

Mars mission, my mission

On 24 September 2014, India became the first country in the world to put a spacecraft into the Mars’ orbit on the first try. By the end of that year, I had already started working on my feature film, Space MOMs, which was about the women who had played key roles in that mission. I conceived my film as a celebration not only of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and its astonishing women – and men – but also of India’s civilisational heritage, which, in my view, has led to this modern-day success.

No country is perfect, but India consistently gets defined by her perceived faults. Regardless of our faith or creed, all Indians are inheritors of a marvellous cultural legacy. I wanted my film, Space MOMs, to reiterate that common bond and unite us.

After ISRO arranged interviews for me with the Mangalyaan engineers, I wrote and copyrighted my screenplay in 2016. I had been in discussion with a Mumbai-based company to produce my film. But we could not get on the same page.

Staying true to ISRO, its engineers

As per the wishes of the engineers I had interviewed, I fictionalised the characters in my script to protect their identities and privacy. But my fiction stayed very true to the spirit of ISRO and the engineers themselves.

The Bollywood producers were pushing me to fabricate elaborate details of the engineers’ personal lives. But I resisted, because I wanted to capture the truth of who these engineers really were — they were raised in typical Indian middle-class homes, where education, familial bonds, and a deep respect for our culture reigned supreme. They led the quiet lives of average Indians. They weren’t cynical of or mocking our traditions and beliefs.

If I was going to dedicate my film to the women and men of ISRO (which I did), and if I was going to claim that my film was inspired by the Mangalyaan mission, then I had a moral duty to ensure that my fictionalisation did not inauthentically portray ISRO engineers

Creating elaborate fictional personal stories would also have pulled my film away from what inspired it: the Mangalyaan mission. I was determined to ensure that the screen-time was used to highlight the trials and tribulations of the mission. Otherwise, I might as well have been filming a family drama. I would have no right to claim that I was making a Mangalyaan film.

Finding solution in everyday lives

To make science easily understandable to everyone, the engineers in my script arrive at solutions to complex scientific problems by using objects and situations from everyday Indian life. The solution to a particularly vexing problem hits Shanti, the engineer mother of a cricket-loving son, when she is listening to the boy describe spin-bowling to her. Chairman Dr Sitaraman gets similar inspiration by observing home-cooked vadas, jalebis and other traditional Indian foods. Schoolteacher Farzana uses the game of catch-me-if-you-can to teach her students about the challenges of sending an orbiter to Mars. Trivial, everyday things – but such fuel for the creative mind.

I parted ways with the Bollywood company in early 2017. They wanted me to load up my script with a grab-bag of irrelevant, made-up details, trying to be all things to all people. But my script had come from my heart, and I was not willing to dumb it down into a soulless corporate commodity. I saw no need to insult the intelligence of the audience – or of the scientists who had entrusted me with their story.

I raised part of the budget from people who shared my vision for a respectful depiction of our country and culture. I mortgaged my house to raise the rest.

I finished filming Space MOMs in early November 2018. I am proud to have made the first feature film inspired by the women of Mangalyaan. And I am proud that I insisted on making it the right way. It is a film about underfunded underdogs, made by underfunded underdogs. It is a heartfelt, dignified and authentic tribute to the women and men of ISRO.

Space MOMs will make Indians proud of their culture, and will make non-Indians respect that culture. That was my goal – and I am happy to say I achieved it.

The author is a filmmaker who wrote and directed Space MOMs, inspired by the women engineers of India’s 2014 Mars Mission. Views are personal.