Crash Course: An engrossing walk through Kota’s coaching factory

The first reaction to Amazon Prime Video’s engrossing trot across the academic decay of Kota’s controversial  coaching institutes is : haven’t we seen all of this already in Raghav Subu’s well-received series Kota Factory?

But hang on. Crash Course is much more than an encore to a successful series. More meaty than me-too, Crash Course visits the sordid politics of education in the city of Kota with a whole lot confident actors conferring a commanding credibility to the wide canvas of characters.

Due to its inordinate length of ten episodes, each forty minutes long, the plot tends to lose itself in a maze of by-lanes—not unlike the gullies and passages of the chaotic topography of Kota—but it quickly finds its way back on the main road.

Like many fictional accounts on social issues, Crash Course shoots itself in the foot by portraying the bad  educationist in much broader strokes than the good educationist. The redoubtable Annu Kapoor is the corrupted  educationist Jindal, who sees his successful coaching institute as a money-making machinery. Jindal’s megalomaniacal ambitions of naming Kota after himself would be laughable, were they not scarily projected by Kapoor.

In contrast, Jindal’s rival Batra, played by Siddharth Kak (remember his popular travel show Surabhi in the 1990s with Renuka Shahane?) comes across as weak while his wheeling-dealing son, played by the talented Bhanu Uday, is  a far stronger and potent presence.

The  plot is a labyrinth of subplots, some of which could have been avoided if only the show’s length was curbed.  Nonetheless, the dynamics of student politics and the inter-personal conflicts  of the alumni are muscularly scripted.

The students are played by supremely self-assured young actors, some of whom have the potential to grow into something substantial: Mohit Solanki (playing Anil Baid, a small towner who is desperate to make the grade), Aryan  Singh (as Rakesh, the pure-hearted virgin who falls for the dubious charms of a local entrepreneur ), Hetal Gada (as Tejal Patel, who is ambitious but also conscientious), her over-ambitious but kind roommate Vidhi Gupta (played by Anushka Kaushik), the girl from a conservative background who crosses the line of  morality. Shanaya (played by  Ridhi Kumar), and especially Hridhu Haroon, playing Sathya Srinivas, the topper who loses the plot, are all excellent in their roles.

Casting director Mukesh Chhabra can take a bow.

However, the ghost of Kota Factory hovers over Crash Course. Pranay Pachauri, as the popular, young in-demand  idolized teacher, seems like a carryover of Jitendra  Kumar from Kota Factory. That apart, this series is far more broadened in its storytelling scope than Kota Factory.

It has its flaws, for example, the sleazy antics of Batra’s elder son (Chirag Vohra) never quite fit into the scheme of things. However, most of the characters are proportionately etched, some of them,  like the  morally challenged fixer Binny Aggarwal (Udit Arora) and the  ganja-selling caterer Antara  Jaiswal (Bidita Bag), bring a surprising amount of energizing greyness to the plot.

There is a traumatizing pregnancy and  abortion in the plot which raises a very important issue: where does the average contemporary youngster go with his or her freedom before misusing it? Crash Course may not be as tightly-structured as we would have liked it to be. But it succeeds in speaking to us on the competitive edge without tripping over.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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