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LOOSE CHANGE Now, please don't tell anybody this because it's bad for my rep: I got a bit nostalgic this past week. Back from short vacation that already seems like it happened last year, I settled in at home and switched on the telly to catch up with news before work on Monday. And there it was, my old school, looking glossier than life in a commercial for Hindustan Lever, Unilever's India-edition behemoth. Since 1875 tradition has played a great part, went the voice-over; the children of kings and princes of Hindustan have studied here; we wear the royal achkan, know how to tie the turban and yet have a foot in the new world. So what are we? We endorse Surf Excel. It washes the dirtiest dirt from the clothes of active, playful kiddies, endorsed by the glossiest looking schoolmarm you can imagine. I mean, if she isn't a model, then I'm Cleopatra. In the almost two decades that I graduated from my private-masquerading-as-public boarding school, I have never felt cheaper. And never felt more strongly about the limits of advertising. I thought about it. Would I feel better if kids at Mayo College, Ajmer, were shown looking engrossed with computers, and post-jingle, the Intel or Compaq logo flashed up? Or, feel prouder if school were linked with Microsoft or Motorola (Vibrating Palm-tops, Guess What It Can Do For Your Term Papers? Buy Now! ). Maybe, because advertising panders to the ego in weird ways. But it's no less venal, and I would squarely hold responsible the administration of my old school, or any school for that matter, which panders to advertising bucks for a brief flash of glory (For more enrolments? Or a year's free supply of Surf Excel? Really!) in some ad-film extolling the virtues of medicinal plaster, fluorescent markers, breakfast cereal or a computer. Perhaps it's a terribly naive thing to say -- and I will hardly be the first one or the last to say it -- but it has to stop somewhere. Because what happens in these cases is dishonest at its core. Any endorsement works on the premise of active approval of those concerned. I have the choice to agree or disagree to endorse Surf Excel. But does the kid who can barely tie his shoelaces? Who decides for him the take that has the potential of boosting massively the sale of detergent? His parents? They aren't there. Clearly, it's the school authorities, and some smart aleck from Lever's (quite possibly an alumnus) goes away smirking. What next? Procter and Gamble hits Doon School, Dehradun for an endorsement for Ariel? It stinks. I strongly believe that educational institutions should be kept away from public-eye advertising. Corporate links have been there since eternity. As with any institution, companies have tie ups for providing computers, management exchange programmes, and so on. It's an endorsement of the product as well as the institution. Routinely, there are bulk deals for supplying everything from ketchup and commodes to books and bats -- and yes, detergent -- to schools and colleges. But that's different, because it's a need, it's business, and by the very act of supply or purchase, an endorsement. But to have places that teach us values -- supposedly, anyway -- dive-bombed into submission in the cheapest possible way and showing a complete lack of ethics and good taste is a no-no. There is a time for learning about the cynical world of advertising, sales and profit. This isn't. This is being used. And that is terrible. A group of four people far better than I said it much better many years ago in a song. And for that, endeared themselves to yet another generation of students: Leave them kids alone.
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