Tamal Kundu
Netflix India’s ‘Class’ is a Hindi-language adaptation of the Spanish series ‘Elite,’ created by Carlos Montero and Darío Madrona. The story is predominantly set at Hampton International, a prestigious school attended by the children of the rich and powerful of the Indian capital. After their old school has burned down, three transfer students from the working-class background — Dheeraj Kumar Valmiki (Piyush Khati), Saba Manzoor (Madhyama Segal), and Balli Sehrawat (Cwaayal Singh) — come to attend Hampton International on scholarships. Initial hostility from their classmates soon turns into a complex mixture of contempt, sexual exploration, suspicion, and desire. If you are wondering whether there is a real Hampton International School in Delhi, we got you covered.
Does Hampton International Exist in Real Life?
No, Hampton International School, as depicted in ‘Class,’ does not exist in Delhi in real life. There is a Hampton International in Pak Kret, Thailand, but that one is a family-owned nursery/kindergarten school. In ‘Elite,’ the students attend Las Encinas, which is also a fictional school. Ashim Ahluwalia, one of the directors of the Indian series, explained in an interview the reasons for setting the story in Delhi over any other places in India, including Mumbai, the financial capital of the country.
“The reason I wanted to set it in Delhi is because the gap between the haves and the have nots is just so massive and very different from Mumbai in that it’s geographically separated,” Ahluwalia told Deadline. “In Mumbai, everyone kind of rubs along next to each other. I went to a fancy school but it wasn’t a patch on some of these wealthy schools in Delhi where the kids are coming to class with bodyguards.”
Although Ahluwalia did not attend a super-exclusive school such as Hampton International or Las Encinas when he was a teenager in South Mumbai, he witnessed the class conflict depicted candidly in ‘Class’ and that played in his decision to be involved in this project. “I’ve always been interested in making something on teenagers, especially wealthy urban teenagers, because that’s a world that I know,” he said. “I went to a school that was very different to the school in ‘Elite,’ or in this series, but had the same elements of class conflict. So while I’d never thought about doing a series before, I thought this would be an interesting project to do.”
One of the biggest arguments against adaptations such as this is that they tend to feel unrelatable to the Indian audience. It is a common criticism aimed at the content that Netflix India produces. Ahluwalia pointed out the unfairness of such observations because that is what Bollywood generally does — create a world that is more fantastical than real. According to him, the excessive wealth they depicted in the show very much exists in the real world. It just has not been shown before on screen.
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