Movie Review: Vaathi (Sir)

I love Balu’s innovative ideas for teaching students when they couldn’t get in touch. If I had a math teacher like Balu sir, there was no way I wouldn’t have been excellent in that course.

This is one of the reasons I don’t like watching Indian movies. They make me so emotional. I can cry at the drop of a hat, and Indian movies know just how to wring tears out of me.

3 Idiots, Krrish, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Like Stars on Earth, Devdas – the list goes on and on, and now Vaathi has come to take a proud strut onto the list.

The Plot

Vaathi tells the story of a private lecturer (Bala Gangadhar Tilak) sent to a public school to cover up for the private schools’ need to keep a monopoly on education in the country.

What Srinivas Tripathi, the president of the private junior colleges association, thought was a great idea became an issue when one of the junior teachers he had sent decided to be a problem by being an excellent teacher, making all the students in a backwater village pass mathematics with distinction, with the promise that he would be promoted to senior lecturer.

That’s a good deal, right?

Wrong.

The Private Junior Colleges Association doesn’t want that at all.

Private schools must have a monopoly on all the excellent teachers in the country. If government schools start having good teachers, parents wouldn’t need to bend over backward to pay for private schools.

The caste system was featured here; however, Balu sir was able to use logic to clear out the stigma and get them all working together. Even when his nemeses ganged up against him, his students came together for him. It was both a pain and a delight to watch all the schemes planned for him to fail and how he maneuvered through it all.

The saying that behind every great man stands a great woman is true. He wouldn’t have made the strides he did without Meenakshi’s help. Take away Meenakshi, and this story would not be this inspiring.

Balu’s Teaching Style

I love Balu’s innovative ideas for teaching students when they couldn’t get in touch. If I had a math teacher like Balu sir, there was no way I wouldn’t have been excellent in that course.

Teachers help frame how we see the world, especially before we get to the university. They can make or mar you.

A good example would be the other tutors sent with Balu to the school. After a month or so, they gave up and left for the city. One had a good excuse to leave, but the other had no valid reason. He just left.

The legacy Balu left helped build the future of that community.

We should be grateful to our teachers who go beyond their duties to help us achieve our dreams, and I can assure you that once a teacher sees that a student really wants to learn and the teacher is the real deal, they will go beyond duty to help out.

I would know; I am a teacher.

Would I recommend the movie?

Definitely!

If you’re a water tank like me, I would advise you to get a box of tissues for when the waterworks start.