TVF “Kota Factory” Season 1 — A review for non-Indians
A story which describes the students of the Indian middle class, especially those pursuing STEM courses.
Indian Institute of Technology - Joint Entrance Examination, shortened as IIT-JEE (now JEE Advanced), is considered one of the toughest exams in India. Students who crack this exam get into one of the most prestigious institutes for the study of STEM subjects in India, the Indian Institutes of Technology. The preparation anxiety amongst the candidates of this exam is akin to the Gaokao exams in China, the USMLE in the United States of America, etc. For specialized preparation for JEE Advanced, coaching institutes have mushroomed up in all parts of India. In a small town called Kota in Rajasthan, India, the coaching facilities for this exam took the form of industrial setup, with almost all the resources of the city devoted to the upkeep and education of such students.
The Viral Fever, a YouTube channel and a media production house, has made a web series called Kota Factory, describing the lifestyle and struggles of students coming to Kota, leaving their cozy homes behind, for the sole aim of cracking JEE Advanced. This is also the first black-and-white web series in India.
The description below this series says thus —
Dedicated to Shrimati SL Loney ji, Shri Irodov ji and Maananiya HC Verma ji, ‘Kota Factory’ — presented by Unacademy — is TVF’s latest original. India’s first ‘Black and White’ show highlights the problems present day IIT-JEE aspirants face in their day-to-day lives.
Each episode of this web series has names of terms used in a factory. The total length of this season is 3 hours and 15 minutes, enough for a cozy Sunday afternoon TV binging time.
Episode 1: Inventory
Length: 47 minutes 43 seconds.
This episode starts with Maheshwari Classes, the top coaching institute of Kota for IIT-JEE, and Vaibhav Pandey, a bright student from Itarsi, another town in Rajasthan. Vaibhav couldn’t enter Maheshwari Classes as he came in mid-year, and from there started his days in Kota, where his paths with Maheshwari Classes again cross at the end of this series.
Episode 2: Assembly Line
Length: 30 minutes 27 seconds.
This episode deals more with Vaibhav adjusting more with Kota, the city of the JEE coaching factory. With more salinity in the water, reluctance to eat food served in the canteen, Vaibhav faces health problems like constipation, insomnia, sleepiness in class, and also inability to study for extended periods of time, etc. Watch as how his friends, along with Jeetu bhaiya, the ‘star’ teacher of Prodigy classes, help Vaibhav to hustle through the problems.
Episode 3: Optimisation
Length: 36 minutes 52 seconds
Vaibhav and his friends face a new problem - Inorganic chemistry. With the faculty of Prodigy Classes unable to help the students out in this, Vaibhav decides he and his friends now have to take things into their hands.
Episode 4: Shutdown
Length: 39 minutes 55 seconds
While Prodigy Classes give their students a break for their class 11 final exams, Vaibhav and his friends find different ways to rejuvenate themselves. They find peace and happiness in the time spent away from classes and make new friends.
Episode 5: Overhaul
Length: 40 minutes 6 seconds.
Vaibhav Pandey and Maheshwari Classes meet again as he aces the selection exam of the coaching institute and is offered a seat in their classes. However, Vaibhav is in a dilemma, as it involves leaving behind all that he has made in the last 6 months: the friendships, the mentorship of Jeetu bhaiya, and of course his crush. This final episode is left unexplained for readers to watch and enjoy it.
Reviews from other sources
(Please don’t go further if you haven’t watched these episodes. Spoilers ahead.)
Critical opinion
The positives.
Overall, this web series was by far one of the best the India media industry has made so far. Each nuance of an IIT aspirant’s life was captured beautifully by this series. It resonated with many youths in India because it maintained almost all the small details of the struggles while living as an aspirant in Kota. Interestingly, the majority of students in India after matriculation, after deciding on pursuing the STEM stream, pack their bags and go to Kota, unaware of the challenges ahead.
The most oft-cited feature of this series is the black-and-white kept across the episodes. Without lengthening or overly highlighting and needlessly adding storylines, this feature served many purposes —
- The facial expressions of each character popped up more vibrantly. You get to look more into the eyes and face of each character instead of roving your eyes all around.
- It gives the viewers an expression of uniformity and a sense of single-mindedness across all people in Kota. Every school has tie-ups with major coaching institutes, every apartment building and every home becomes a dormitory/hostel for the students, every small eatery in the nook and corner of the localities have subsidized menu for students. Kachoris (Onion puffs) are sold in packets and small plates made from pages of old books used for IIT-JEE. Even an autorickshaw/tuktuk driver in Kota gives reviews and suggestions regarding coaching centres and teachers in Kota.
- It also gives the viewers a feeling that these scenes could be memories in Vaibhav’s mind, as he recalls them in black-and-white. This gives an aspect of the time frame, that all the events shown had been in the past. Only we will later know if these were good memories for him or not.
This web series delivered some of the best dialogues which touch people’s hearts.
In Episode 1, Jeetu bhaiya said,
Children leave Kota in 2 years, but Kota doesn’t leave the children for years. What does Kota do? It isolates you from the world. Then it doesn’t matter in life which government went down in the elections, who got married to whom and who won the IPL. None of it matters in life. Parents, siblings, friends and relatives, everything is left behind. And you are left here alone. What is left? IIT. You keep harping about IIT over here.
When you desire something so much at your tender age, there are only two outcomes. If you get into your institute of desire, then you have peace. You’re chilled. And if you don’t get in, you wind up being jealous, rancour and drowned in self-doubt. One loses confidence when that happens, brother. That moment, a person deems himself a bigger loser than the world does. After that, no matter how good a college you get into, you don’t like it because it is not IIT.
This struck a chord in every Indian’s heart who pursued IIT in 10+2, and either succeded or failed.
Some more touching quotes here —
When Vaibhav started venting out his frustrations over inorganic chemistry, we too got that frustration again in our feels.
All in all, it’s a complete package of different emotions intermingled with our memories.
The Negatives.
Though it is very difficult to point out mistakes in such a well-written story, however, I have noticed certain minute lapses.
- The night-time scenes, during which Vaibhav and his friends roamed around in a scooty, could have been presented with more contrast. This is a technical issue which I noticed, because of which sometimes objects of different colors get the same shade of grey when converted to B&W.
- Minimal parental portrayal — The only time parents were involved were in Episodes 1 and 2, and that too only Vaibhav’s parents were shown. Shivangi’s father was told to be an IITian (an engineer who graduates from IIT), while none of the other characters had any contact with their parents. Even Vaibhav’s connection with his parents abruptly stops after Episode 2 and this is told by his mother as “Finally he has settled”. This seemed a bit absurd to me, because no matter how much isolated you are with respect to communication, a student in Kota or any other place hardly misses to call his/her parents at least once a week. Parents even sometimes send homemade foodstuffs through courier services. The omission of these gestures in this seemed a bit put off.
- Apart from mentioning the difficulty in inorganic chemistry, the writers seem to have given us the assumption that other topics like Mechanics, Permutations and Combinations, Calculus, Complex Numbers, Matrices and Determinants, etc. were very easy for Vaibhav and his friends. This series seems to focus less on the difficulties in studies, and more on other things. There’s hardly any mention of standard books, apart from the mention of Resnick and Halliday’s Fundamentals of Physics, which they used while copying answers in Episode 1. Moreover, beyond Episode 2, Vaibhav doesn’t seem to have any problem with regards to completing the syllabus, while in reality, many students had to get hospitalised due to sheer exhaustion and utter disregard to one’s health. I feel this aspect should be looked into and should be added in relevant places.
- Shivangi’s character could have been expanded further as a NEET aspirant. The series seems to have omitted the struggles of NEET aspirants. (For those who don’t know what NEET is, it is the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for entry into medical colleges of India, akin to the USMLE exam). Season 1 has exclusively focussed on IIT aspirants, whereas Kota and it’s coaching institutes cater even to medical aspirants too. Let’s hope we can see something in this regard in Season 2.
Watching this web series, I feel this work deserved the IMDb rating of 9.7/10 it got. This can be said to be one of the modern masterpieces of the Indian entertainment industry, which relied on simple but impactful stories. It gives a lesson that you do not always need a star-studded cast, or a big ensemble of production crew, or oodles of sleaze to increase appeal. Simple, heart-touching stories with lesser-known but dedicated actors can make a mark on the audience which regular run-of-the-mill films might not always do.
