Hello everyone, it is I, your Feisty Indian Aunty who just watched Kota Factory on Netflix and was taken back in time to my university days, in Madras, in the late 60s. I too was one of those kids, thrown into a high pressure environment, facing the full weight of parental expectation, and pushed to excel. I came out alright, but it was a different time then. Kids these days seem to have it a lot harder.
This series also reminded me of the real world private schools in England called “crammers,” where rich students enter to achieve suitable grades to fulfill their dreams of entering the best universities in the world. I used to teach in one of those schools. Between 1978 and 1980, I did a stint at Davies, Laing and Dick in Notting Hill Gate, where I encountered many students like the ones we see in Kota Factory.
Watching this series felt personal. I could relate to almost everything that was happening on screen. Both from my days as a student, and then later as a teacher, and finally as a parent.
The road to university is a difficult one. These days, the competition for the best schools are cutthroat. Kids don’t just need great grades, but need to be proficient in multiple languages, play a musical instrument at an expert level, and be a social media influencer. In India, getting into IIT is the ultimate accomplishment. It is the Indian Ivy. It is very parent’s desire and every child’s nightmare.
In Kota Factory, we follow Viabhav Pandey who moves to Kota, in the middle of an academic year, to enroll in the Prodigy Coaching Class to prepare for the IIT entrance exams. While there, he befriends an odd group of teenagers, all of whom become his support system in the punishing environment that is the university preparatory school.
As they work towards cracking one of the toughest entrance exams ever, they develop their friendships and grow to become better versions of themselves.
It is often said that your university days are the best days of your lives. It is there where life-long friendships and relationships are formed, with your mates, with your teachers, with those people who will genuinely make a difference in your life, influencing and guiding the many choices and decisions that you’re expected to make at that very young age.
All students go through their own hell in order to be able to cope with life at university. It is often your first time away from home and without good friends and great teachers, it is unlikely that you’ll get through the experience unscathed.
These sorts of campus shows are a dime a dozen. This is a story that has been done to death. But in this series, it is the authenticity of the friendship between Vaibhav, Meena, and Uday that make it stand out. That and the relationship they have with their teacher, Jeetu Bhaiya, a brilliant physicist from IIT, who makes it his life’s work to help these students in every way possible.
That’s what makes Kota Factory so amazing. It’s characters. They are immediately relatable. They are you or someone you know. And that makes you completely invested in their lives.
Kota Factory doesn’t make any moral proclamations. This is neither a recrimination nor a celebration of India’s lopsided education system. It is merely about the lives of the young people who are caught up in it. And by keeping the series grounded, the writers, Abhishek Yadav, Saurabh Khanna and Sandeep Jain, manage to strike a wonderful balance between fact and fiction, thereby giving you what feels like genuine insight.
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