Intrigue

CHALK N DUSTER is an emotional journey of two teachers Vidya ( Shabana Azmi) & Jyoti ( Juhi Chawla) , serving at a Mumbai - based High School. Their passion and love for teaching, bonds them in a special relationship with their students. Their gratification is good grades, moral values they strive to impart to students.However, in an evil turn of events, a wicked lady, Kamini Gupta ( Divya Dutta) gets appointed as the School Principal, who earlier worked in the capacity of a Supervisor. She is extremely cunning by nature and monopolizes on every opportunity she can find her hands on. In a bid to make profits for the school, she decides to fire experienced teachers to replace them with fresher teachers. The saved funds of which she can boastfully present to the school trustees, at the cost of quality education. Vidya suffers a sudden heart attack due to her dismissal from school. The school management threatens the staff to cut ties with Vidya. At such a time, Jyoti stands up for her friend and colleague, Vidya. Together they fight to earn their respect and credibility as teachers and unite against prejudices set by the management.—Production House

CHALK N DUSTER is an emotional journey of two teachers Vidya ( Shabana Azmi) and Jyoti ( Juhi Chawla) , serving at a Mumbai - based High School. Their passion and love for teaching, bonds them in a special relationship with their students. Their gratification is good grades, moral values they strive to impart to students. However, in an evil turn of events, a wicked lady, Kamini Gupta ( Divya Dutta) gets appointed as the School Principal, thus changing the fate of the administration. The drama unfolds in theaters from 15th of January, 2016.—Production House

Two teachers Vidya (Shabana Azmi) and Jyoti (Juhi Chawla) are serving at a Mumbai-based Kantaben High School. Their passion and love for teaching bonds them in a special relationship with their students. Their gratification is good grades and the moral values they strive to impart to students. Other teachers include Manjeet (Upasna Singh), and others. Jyoti is married to Sunil (Sameer Soni) who has a business of computer supplies. Kamini Gupta (Divya Dutta) is the senior administrator of the school, reporting into the Principal Indu.

Vidya is one of the senior staff members at this fair to middling educational institution, which has thus far functioned smoothly. Vidya is a kind woman, who provides free tuition to kids in her locality who do not have means to pay for personal tutors. Vidya is married to Manohar (Girish Karnad).

Kamini is a tough administrator and works the teachers very hard. She is in charge of the school annual function which is being attended by the chairman of board of trustees Anmol. Kamini pushes the teachers around with her whims to make them understand that she is in charge. Teachers are made to work hard to prepare student for the annual school event. Kamini asks all teachers to report at 8 AM, even though the function starts at noon. Principal Indu asks Kamini to change reporting time to 10 AM but is shocked to find all teachers arrived at 8 AM. Kamini claims that she forgot to inform them. Kamini is very good at upward management and gets all the credit for a successful annual function, in front of Anmol.

6 months later everything changes with the appointment of the new principal. The teachers face unpleasant surprises when the popular and considerate Indu (Zarina Wahab) is replaced by the ambitious and cut-throat Kamini, who aspires to upscale this middle-class school. Naresh Patel (Jackie Shroff) is the Principal of the DGM school, which is just 1 Km away from Kantaben. Kamini says that the kids of elites study at DGM and the kids of their drivers and servants study at Kantaben as Indu was very egalitarian in her views. Anmol is aligned with the vision that Kamini paints for him. Kamini wants to have modern facilities like swimming pools and AC classrooms, attended by young teachers, to change the image of the school.

Kamini cannot remove the tenured teachers, so decides to make their life difficult and forcing them to quit. Kamini says that tenured teachers are also expensive and replacing one can get 3 teachers at same cost, who are also young, energetic, smart and good looking. Teachers' chairs are removed from the classrooms, the tea is no longer free (costs Rs 7 per tea), and subjects are juggled so that, for example, the overweight Hindi teacher is now assigned physical training.

Fees for students is increased and admissions made more selective to admit only upper-class children. Teachers are also forced to pay the fees for their kids studying in the school, as all exemptions are removed.

One day Vidya is running a fever but takes a math class as exams are near. She rests for a minute on an empty student's desk and is seen by Kamini. Kamini tries her utmost to prove that Vidya was not teaching, but sleeping in class, but fails when even the weakest student answers Kamini's questions correctly. Kamini is livid and takes objection to Vidya's teaching methods and threatens to fire her. Vidya knows that Kamini wants to fire the senior teachers, so she can appoint junior teachers who do her bidding.

All of this is too much for the good nature person Vidya, who suffers a heart attack after a sudden and unfair dismissal. Kamini describes Vidya as outdated, incompetent, and incapable. Naresh takes advantage of the situations and sends reporter Bhairavi Thakkar (Richa Chaddha) to the school to report on Vidya's heart attack.

In solidarity, her friend and colleague Jyoti decides to take on Kamini and the misdirected board of trustees, led by Anmol (Arya Babbar). This entails using a TV channel as a platform for reminding viewers that teachers need support, recognition and more pay.

Kamini tries to buy off Jyoti by promoting her to an admin job as supervisor and giving her husband a large order for computer supplies (30 desktops and 10 laptops, all at rack rates) for the school. Jyoti responds by confronting Kamini in front of the entire teacher staff, but shockingly none of the teachers support Jyoti in her tirade against Kamini. Jyoti is forced to resign from the school.

The outpouring of public sympathy, due to the favorable media coverage means that ex-students testify to the competence of Vidya and Jyoti and expose the school management's decision to terminate both as arbitrary. It also means that Vidya receives enough crowd sourced money to pay off her entire medical bill. She is soon on the path to recovery when an ex-student turns out to be the heart cardio-surgeon of the hospital and takes her under his personal care.

To counter this, Kamini devises a plan to entice Jyoti and Vidya into a Who wants to be a millionaire type quiz. The prize money is big, but unknown to anyone, the questions are designed by Kamini herself to ensure that Jyoti and Vidya lose and expose their incompetence to the entire world.

A recovered Vidya and Jyoti taking on the quiz to win Rs. 5 Crore. The trade-off is that if they lose, they will have to accept their termination, but if they win, they get the Rs 5 Crores, reinstatement of their jobs and a public apology from Kamini and the school board.

Vidya and Jyoti use their talents and win the quiz battle. Unwillingly, the trustee Anmol signs the bank check of 5 Crore rupees. The principal Kamini apologizes to Vidya and Jyoti publicly through over the TV show.

At the end, Vidya reveals that she will be handing over the money to former principal Indu to build a school where no teacher will be discriminated against, and students will have a good education for less cost.