I think I’ve got a handle on it, finally. Granted, it did take a while, but now it’s rather obvious; I was a chump to have missed it. I think. But I’m new here, give me a break. I’m only beginning to learn the Ashokan way.
When a cerebral cynosure that Ashoka’s student body was proud to call one of its own asked M. Sarkar why we desecrated the parts of our esteemed university with, of all things, the names of the entities that paid for them (very much unlike every other private institute in the world, mind), it was immediately apparent to me that I’d somehow been fortunate enough to be granted entry to the upper echelons of India’s social conscience. This was where the real thought was at.
But god knows well enough, I’m somewhat on the dense side - it took a friend informing me (at the document center where we were printing our mandatory physical copies of the 120 page course readings) that Ashoka had pulled a Spock, gone where no man had dared to go, and decreed that the use of physical posters for public communication was now disallowed to save paper. I mean, you can’t knock that.
So when, one early morning, Nestlé unveiled its diabolical mug betwixt the second and third academic centers, in a haze of January smog, I knew it wasn’t long for this world. The corporation that the world’s most unconscionable companies call daddy, the name in the top three of literally almost every list of the world’s most unethical companies, in Ashoka? I confess, for a moment I broke faith, and strained the old sighters to see if this wasn’t some sort of “Adibas” situation. But no, it was the real thing.
“Oh ye of little faith,” the voice in my head said. For a moment I was Judas. But it was a momentary weakness. I know now I needn’t have worried. Surely, there had to have been some talk about the company that justified and acknowledged the use of child labor on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast. The unwavering crowd that darkens its doorstep at its every open minute is obviously a screen. A screen, behind which the socially conscious elite at Ashoka congregate, and make ready to drive the company that unethically promoted harmful infant formula to poor mothers in developing countries off the campus that raises eyebrows at classrooms merely being named after corporations.
It’s all rather clear now. Nestlé will nestle in this Eden no longer.
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