Professor Prashant Kale: The King of Hearts

Now if wishes were horses and if pigs could fly (which means there won’t be any swine flu) and if someone from Mars could have landed in Atrium at the meal time in ISB campus, he/she/it would have figured out that Professor Prashant Kale is the most popular Professor in ISB campus. A cursory glance in the Goel Dining Hall would have yielded this information. There is a near desperation amongst pupils to sit on the table, where eats a man whose demeanour and sartorial elegance reveal a rare matrimony between style and sobriety. Only Professor Kale can successfully carry off sneakers with immaculately ironed pants and tucked in full-sleeved formal shirts!

Actually those sneakers are hardly incongruous in his ensemble. They are worn strategically–you would expect the professor of Competitive Strategy to walk the talk –and sure enough those boots facilitate his rapid climbing up and down on the class stairs, as he energetically goes about cold-calling students. “Well, you haven’t put your name tag in front of you, but I know you are Rohit,” says the much loved husky voice. “And since you have worked in an automobile firm, do you think Tata Nano was a good value proposition to the Indian customers?” asks the man whose memory can rival that of an elephant. “How does he remember the names, employers, backgrounds, ethnicities of all his pupils?” marvels an enraptured girl. “Sustained effort, involvement and energy,” comes the terse reply from a stoic but equally enraptured bench mate.

In fact, absence of the above-mentioned qualities is the only thing that can ruffle the professor’s legendary sangfroid. (OK, you can add - flippancy during class and him not finding his non-vegetarian dish bowl during lunch time - to the sparse list of “Things that irritate Prashant Kale.”)
The legend meanwhile has other rich anecdotes from past – Of how he has been repeatedly voted as the best professor in the campus. Of how, once he allowed students from “other sections” (there are two categorisations in ISB- Those who have been taught by Professor Kale and those who haven’t been) to attend his class and there was a deluge of 200 students to attend his class, ensuring that ISB issued  a you-cannot-attend-a different-professor’s-class-than-the-one-designated-to-you policy. Of how, he was a reticent student during his days at IIM Ahmedabad (in his words, his alma mater is not as fancy as ISB, but it isn’t a bad place to be in.)  Of how his consultancy clients include the creme da le creme of Forbes list. Of how students bid 2000 points for studying strategy when there were rumours of him teaching the elective course.

Yes, there are other fascinating professors in ISB too and they charm you in their own way. Mudit Kapoor’s  “fair enough” shrug of shoulders, Bruce Allen’s mustachioed smiles, Krishna Kumar’s documentaries, John Zang’s endearing examples, Jagmohan Raju’s avuncular those-were-the-days explanations, Siva’s sardonic humor, Mohan V’s energetic accounting and Sumit K’s murphy baby-finger on cheek- contemplations coupled with alliterations of “folks, folks focus”…all this is charming, but Professor Kale is different. He doesn’t charm. Charming is easy actually. All intellectually sensitive men can be charming. But Professor Kale woos. And we fall.

“Is he a magician?” wonders a girl, spellbound after Kale’s perspicacious analysis of Walmart’s global strategy. The reply from the bench mate is prompt, “Of course, he is a magician. Haven’t you seen the finesse with which he shuffles the cards? So what if there are names inscribed on these cards instead of spades, clubs and diamonds? So what if he calls himself a devil’s advocate? He is the real King of Hearts.”


Dinker Vashisht, Class of 2012