The Tuition Teacher of Gali Number Four: Complete Story and Current Track

Free classes in a front room versus a coaching chain across the street - the full story of Sushma Verma so far.

Here is the complete story of The Tuition Teacher of Gali Number Four from the first episode to the present track.

The setup

Sushma Verma taught mathematics in a government school for thirty-four years. She retired six years ago and, because she did not know what else to do with her evenings, began teaching the children of her lane in her front room. Six to eight, five days a week, free. Nineteen children when the serial opens, ranging from class six to class twelve.

She is not sentimental about it and the show does not make her a saint. She is strict, occasionally unfair, and keeps a running list of every student who ever wasted her time.

The arrival

In the fourth episode a coaching chain opens a branch in the commercial building at the mouth of the lane. Air conditioning, printed modules, a projector, and a fee of four thousand rupees a month with a discount for early enrolment. Its branch manager, Rakesh, is not a villain either - he is a salesman with targets who genuinely believes his product is better.

Within three weeks, eleven of Sushma's nineteen students have moved.

What the serial is actually about

The show could have made this a simple fight between a good old teacher and a bad new business. It does something more interesting. Some of the children who move do better. The printed modules are genuinely well made. The parents who moved their children are not fools - they are people who have calculated, correctly, that a board exam is the only lever their child has, and that four thousand rupees is a rational bet.

Sushma's argument is not that the coaching centre is worthless. It is that a child who cannot pay four thousand rupees still deserves someone to explain quadratic equations, and that when her front room closes there will be nobody in this lane doing that.

The Farhan track

Farhan, fifteen, is the strongest student Sushma has taught in twenty years and the one who cannot pay. His father drives an auto and has already decided that Farhan will start working after class ten. The centre offers Farhan a free seat - as a scholarship case they can advertise - and the offer comes with a photograph, a banner and his father's name in a testimonial.

Sushma tells him to take it. This is the moment the serial establishes that she is not fighting for herself.

The current track

The lane's residents' association has proposed that Sushma start charging a nominal fee, partly to keep her going and partly because several parents feel uncomfortable receiving something free. Sushma has refused, for reasons she has not explained to anyone in the serial yet - and the writers have been disciplined about not revealing them early.

Meanwhile the coaching branch has missed its enrolment target twice and Rakesh is under pressure from his regional head, which has pushed him towards tactics he is visibly uneasy about, including a claim in a pamphlet about Sushma's results that is not true.

Why it works

The Tuition Teacher of Gali Number Four is the most restrained show on our originals slate. Nobody is scheming, nobody has a hidden identity, and the conflict comes entirely from two reasonable positions that cannot both win. At seven in the evening, five nights a week, it is unusually easy to keep watching.