Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is as breezy as it is earnest, discovers Deepa Gahlot.
Key Points
- Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is a seven-part series on Amazon Prime Video, set in a dysfunctional government school in a fictitious town near Delhi.
- Kay Kay Menon stars as Headmaster Gyaneshwar, who is initially clueless but becomes motivated by the prospect of a foreign trip to Cambridge.
- The show balances humour with genuine concerns about the apathetic education system, including disinterested students and teachers facing insurmountable hurdles.
A government school anywhere would offer enough grist for the comedy mill, so a fictitious one, located in a place called Tinki Toli, which is in ‘almost Delhi’, has it relatively easy because a place like this has to be dysfunctional and hence, ripe for lampooning.
Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya looks like it belongs to the TVF universe but it is not. Still, there is a common DNA, since creators Biswapati Sarkar and Sameer Saxena are alumni from the production house that finds its material in the mundanity of everyday life.
The school’s building is nondescript — there are clothes drying on the gates! When the show opens, Headmaster Gyaneshwar (Kay Kay Menon) is playing cricket with a bunch of unruly students because the local MLA has commandeered the premises for a family wedding.
A bureaucrat, presumably from the education department, arrives with requested supplies and a new maths teacher, Kanchan (Prasanna Bisht), who is told she will have to teach physics as well because what’s the difference, right?
The students are as disinterested in learning as the teachers in imparting an education, since they are all aware that the kids don’t really have a chance to make it in a competitive system, where the odds are stacked against them.
The students don’t look too underprivileged nor the staff as bedraggled like in a real government-run school. Still, there are insurmountable hurdles in running the school.
Motivation and Mayhem
Getting any equipment is a struggle for Gyaneshwar, but the MLA known as ‘Ganwaar’ Goldy (Deven Bhojani) chips in when he wants to, since the parents are potential vote banks.
The headmaster, who is generally clueless about what goes on in his domain, suddenly perks up when he is told that the principal of the school that gets the best results in the upcoming board exams, will get an all-expenses-paid trip to Cambridge.
That coveted foreign trip becomes the incentive to beat the other schools, even with a bunch of kids who are barely literate.
Using that as a foundation, the seven-part series comes up with episodes in which Director Himank Gaur and his large team of writers balance genuine concerns of an apathetic system with humorous incidents.
Quirky Characters and Social Commentary
The earnest Kanchan’s methods run counter to the ruler-in-hand, punishment-oriented approach of the Hindi teacher, Hansraj Meena (Abhimanyu Singh), but she realises that the children, so unused to any kind of discipline, are difficult to handle.
There is the school counsellor, Mukul (Naveen Kasturia), functioning out of a messy storeroom, who cannot even communicate with his rebellious daughter (Akshara Padval). The English teacher, Shiney (Ajitesh Gupta), is dyslexic, and a shy, pallu-on-head Sharma Ma’am (Annaporana Soni) is aghast when she has to take a class in sex-ed.
Still, when the headmaster starts taking his duties seriously, the others are inspired too — though they are not aware of the hidden agenda.
Gyaneshwar has to keep buttering up the MLA’s assistant, Urmila (Archana Puran Singh), who bears an old grudge, and also happens to be his wife’s (Prachee Shah) sister.
Humour, Heart, and Hard Realities
Some episodes are hilarious, like the one in which they get a successful former student to inspire the indifferent students, but he (Hussain Dalal) turns out to be a conman. There’s also the episode with a TV reporter (played by Sarkar himself) attempting a hatchet job on the school when they ask him for help to polish their image, and the one in which a teacher’s odd side hustle is revealed.
In the midst of the good-natured tomfoolery, there are bursts of social comment, like when the MLA’s nephew poaches students to work in his bidi factory, or when Goldy expects the most hopeless kids to work as unpaid party workers.
The biggest obstacles in the progress of the kids are their parents who’d rather that they started earning money instead of wasting time in school. They know that their children, studying in a resource-poor public school, will get no opportunities in any case.
A lot of them come to school just for the mid-day meal, especially the kheer on Tuesdays. When an austerity move cuts that treat out of their meal, the kids are up in arms.
A Breezy Yet Earnest Underdog Story
This season of the show wisely does not go into the backstories of the teachers or any of the students because when faced with real deprivation, it is hard to be funny.
Gaur keeps the show light, and does not overdo the humour, except for the sly episode in which they are forced to teach a ‘revised’ history glorifying Goldy, the plots in each episode are believable and often heart-warming.
It is an underdog story, which has the pragmatism to understand that there is no magic wand that will bring about overnight change.
Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is as breezy and it is earnest, and Kay Kay Menon, with his sardonic manner, leads the merry band of teachers, who will undoubtedly find much to do in future seasons of the show because surely Tinki Toli has much more to offer.
Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya streams on Prime Video.
