Yesterday I was at ISB attending “Solstice”. I went too early so managed to catch up with Nishi and Geetu while waiting for Sanchita. I love the campus and it felt nice to be back. Once Sanchita came, we walked around the stalls and then got a foot massage at the RC. Just before the foot massage we managed to meet with Kavita. She was feeling better after a bout of flu and couldn’t quite believe it herself :):). Kavita mentioned that she was meeting Prof Sri Sridharan and I immediately asked her if any of our other professors were on campus. For some strange reason I specifically asked about Prof Kale because I thought he was in India. She said no and then we went about doing our own things.
Went to Sanchita’s house for lunch and it was great to meet with Sanchita’s parents and just enjoyed their hospitality. We got back to the campus around 4 and went to the Atrium to wait for Siva, Sreedhar Challa, Feroze and Raghu Babu. As soon as I sat down, I got a call from Prof Kale !! He was on campus and Kavita had told him that I had asked after him. He had just completed his class and was taking the flight back to the US in a couple of hours. Siva and Prof Kale came to the Atrium at the same time and it was so much fun catching up with them. And true to Kale style, he asked me about Aon Hewitt’s payroll division being sold off to Everstone. I was genuinely stumped because many of our own colleagues had missed seeing that newspaper article in Economic Times and Prof Kale had !! I can never forget Prof Kale knowing exactly who worked for which company and he knew more about our firms than we did :):). It’s no surprise that he is amongst the top 10 living business school professors in the world.
It was a really pleasant coincidence to meet Prof Kale and chat for a little while. He will be back in Jan for the 2015 batch, and Chandresh I told him you are in the class. So please go prepared :).
In the evening it was Dr. Shashi Tharoor with the keynote address and I am writing about that in a separate note. It was great to see Prof Subramaniam getting the fellowship grant from the Alum fund and he spoke so well. I remember a lunch discussion with Prof Kale during our classes, where he said, the fundamental difference between the US and Indian business schools is, in the US the emphasis is on knowledge creation and in India its on knowledge dissemination. Hopefully at ISB, we will buck the trend and these fellowship grants would certainly help.
Atleast courtesy Solstice, Sanchita came into the Atrium through the main entrance :):):). She was so used to coming into the classroom from EH that she never thought there could be another entrance. I left around 8.30 and Sanchita left too because Siva was missing Ram and didn’t think Sanchita was good company. Infact while speaking to Ram, he didn’t even mention our names, only Sreedhar and Raghu Babu :(:(.
Now, tell me where else will you find these kind of friends except in a school ??? So one should do the PGPMAX, also because you make school friends again – where there are no pretences, no hang ups and you actually can be yourself.
Btw Feroze, Dr. Tharoor will attend your lecture sooner than we thought :).
Great catching up guys and the rest of the Hyd gang, will meet next time.
Sure …… 🙂