One Hour in Bandhavgadh

In last one year I developed a habit of going for trekking/trailing/hiking almost in every weekend, continuously. Other than these small weekend trips, I have been to many places in India as well. No wonder I love travelling, no matter what kind of place it is. But one place I could never hit is Jungle. It doesn't matter whatever the reason is, but the fact is I have never been to any jungle. So when someone shares his experience of jungle, I don’t miss the chance to jump onto it. This is a story I heard from one of my brother’s friend. I am trying to narrate the story in his language.

It was around mid November. We four friends planned for Bandhavgarh National Park. Our group is full of passionate jungle lovers, so whenever we plan anything, we plan for jungle only. When we reached Bandhavgarh, we didn’t know that this was going to be our most thrilling adventure ever. This time we are carrying SLR cameras also to capture the moments. Normally we do avoid cameras, because what we believe is, a camera spoils the mood of the trip. In our schedule, we planned only three days to stay in the buffer state of the jungle. Very first day we opted for the elephant ride. It was fun. The mahoot took us to a 3 hrs long ride. All eight pairs of eyes were searching for tiger. We were pretty sure that it was an easy job finding something yellow in all different shades of green. But unfortunately we didn’t find any until the mahot pointed out to something. Yes it was a tiger, resting under a tree. But it was far away from us. He didn’t even bother that we were around. That’s the only tiger we saw in the entire 3 hrs journey. Next day we were looking for more. The mahoot said we need to go deep inside the jungle for more fun, we agreed. But end of day, we returned with a hell lot of disappointment. It was not that we didn’t see tiger, but the entire day wasn’t thrilling. In the second day evening after returning back we asked the mahoot to take us to the jungle by walking. We wanted to feel the vibes of the jungle by standing on our own feet. He laughed on our childish approach and denied our proposal straight away. We told him that no need to go deep into jungle, only a km or so walking would be sufficient for us. But he wasn’t ready as he was a government employee and he might lose his job by doing so. But in these two days we heard so many stories from the gatekeeper, the cook, the mahoot, a sense of desperation was boiling inside us. In the night time we gave another try. In the attempt we got hold of the mahoot’s nephew. He agreed to take us to the jungle by walking. Without putting much effort we convinced the teenage boy for this for a nominal amount of money.

Next day morning we woke up very early with all the excitement. As per advice we put two layers of socks just to avoid under bush insect attacks. Odomos and every other precaution were already taken. The deal was, the guy will take us through the lighter part of the jungle for one hour. We will give him some extra money if he can show us some deer or any harmless creature. Definitely we were not expecting more than this in the outer region of the national park. We saw a big bolo knife kind of thing in his hand. It was required. Without chopping down the big grass (till our chest height) we can’t even think walking in the jungle. We took lot of snaps of birds and the jungle; it was really a thrilling experience I must say. Once we were about to start our return journey suddenly we realized a big silence in the jungle. Our guide just turned around and put the index finger on his mouth indicating us not to make noise.

“If you give me 500 Rs right now, I will show you something which you will never forget in your life” – He whispered in front of us.

Within a second our hearts started beating faster than ever. We understood he must be talking about showing tiger, but we were not sure how can we see a tiger standing on the ground. The question was, seeing a tiger here is not possible then what kind of stuff he was going to show us.

We gave him 500 bucks and asked him whether it would be risky or not.

 “Sir you are walking through the jungle of Bandhavgarh and expecting no risk!!! Just have faith on me and don’t make any noise. Follow exactly what I tell you to do. And please no camera at the spot.”

Once we said we are ready, he put his bolo knife inside the scabbard hanging from his belt. Our only weapon to fight with wild animal is also locked down into the scabbard. Till that time he was chopping the grass, now he started walking by dodging the big grass. We were just quietly following him. We walked for another 2-3 mins before we stopped. Again he turned back and indicated us to keep quiet and not to move from where we were. The next thing he did was walked two steps forward and moved the grass aside to give us a clear vision to the other side of that bush.

What we saw just made us speechless. Something got stuck on my throat, my heart stopped beating for a while. I felt someone was holding my hand firmly. My legs were shaking; I didn’t know how I could able to stand there.

It was a tiger, just 100 ft away, sitting on a dead dear facing us. His mouth was red with the blood of the deer. The stunning thing was, the tiger was staring at us. He was very much aware of our presence. Later I thought why I didn’t try to find some big tree to climb up (Though I never tried that). But the fact was, we lost controls on our actions. I was just waiting for the time when the tiger will jump on us. Suddenly I heard the guide whispering again.

“Just walk backwards without losing the eye contact with the tiger”

We did exactly what he said just like a robot. After taking 10-15 steps backward, he asked us to run, the sweetest command in that situation. We all had five minutes of directionless running before the guide stopped us. The moment we stopped, we all pounced on him, scolding him for his irresponsible behavior. But he didn’t move at all with all the comments.

 ”You all were safe there”, calmly he said.

“I was pretty sure the tiger won’t leave his prey, as he doesn’t get that majestic lunch very often. Moreover if you keep the eye contact maintained, it will never pounce on us. That’s the basic rule of jungle; no one attacks till the eye contact is maintained.”

I don’t remember how we managed to drag ourselves back to the cottage. But honestly this is the most thrilling experience I ever had in my life.

Cafe De Cocca

Its Professor Chatterjee again, he told us such wonderful stories throughout our two years of interaction. I really feel pity that we could only manage two years under his teaching. But again it was not in our hand. We had mathematics as a main subject only for first two years.

Let’s come back to the story. On that day we were very few in the class room. It was drizzling outside. When Professor entered the class room, he found only 10-15 of us in the room. It was post lunch session, so he thought other guys might not be back from their lunch. So he decided to wait for few minutes before starting the lecture.

But we knew, those missing guys wouldn’t be coming back to class room. They were busy in the Cafeteria. Now on that time, our college were under construction, so the canteen was outside of our campus and easily visible from the window.

I pointed out to the cafeteria and said “Sir, you may start. Those guys are enjoying their lives in that cafeteria. They won’t come back now for the lecture. “

“Can someone go and call them for the lecture” – Mr. Chatterjee replied.

A very studious girl among us said “Don’t worry sir; they won’t mind it at all. Those mass bunkers can’t do justice to your lecture ever”

Dr Chatterjee looked outside for a while and then said “Are you sure that is not Café De Cocca?”

We couldn’t relate his statement with anything, but knowing Mr. Chatterjee we understood that it’s a story time. We all filled the empty spaces in the front row and started waiting for the story.

Mr. Chatterjee sat on the table and started the story.

Have you ever heard of University of Gottingen?  It is a historic and one of the highest ranked universities Germany. In the campus there was a cafeteria named Café De Cocca. It was just like any other cafeteria in any college campus. One day, a professor was having a cup of tea and solving a mathematical problem. After putting lot of efforts also he couldn’t solve that problem. Finally before leaving the café he wrote the same problem on the register book and below that a note saying whoever can solve this will be awarded a bottle of wine. After a few days, when the professor checked the register, he found someone has solved the problem in the register itself with his name. The professor found that guy; he was a student of the university itself. He gifted him a bottle of wine. This incident got very popular in the campus and soon after this; it became a trend to write down problems in that register with a token prize to be given. Eventually the Café manager put a notice for all asking not to disturb anyone in the café, not to rub any calculation or writing from the wall and the table without permission. A fresh register book was also put there.

The trend continued till the Second World War. During the world war it was decided that no bombardment would be done on renowned universities like Oxford, Gottingen etc. But unfortunately Café de Cocca got demolished completely in bombing. With that incident, the register got lost forever. Researchers think that register would have been a tremendous treasure to all fields of science.

Some people say, the manager of the café was able to take that register out from there and kept it with him. He wasn’t a very literate person, but seeing the evil side of technology and invention during the World War II, he gave that to his grandson to destroy it before some Satan’s followers find it. But again no supported facts are present to prove this.

So that’s why my dear students I told you not to ignore the cafeteria. That can be the next Café De Cocca.

Disclaimer: I am not very sure about the name of the café. The name of the café is just faded out from my memory. It was something like this if not exactly the same.

Four Color Problem

I heard this story from one of our professors in college, Mr Deepak Chatterjee. Besides being a very good mathematics teacher, he was a great story teller as well and that was part of his teaching method to hold our interests (we realized it later). He did his PhD from ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) and on that time he was heading the mathematics department of St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.

That day in the class he was about to start a new chapter on probability. Before starts he told us a story. He told that in Bengali though, I am just trying to translate the same in English. Please bear my English for rest of the write up.

Now enjoy the story in his words.

It was around 1850, a kid Francis Guthrie was coloring a map of England and asked his brother Fredrick that how many different colors he needs to paint the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Fredrick couldn’t answer this. Next day he went to University College where he was a student. He asked the same question to his math professor Mr. Augustus De Morgan. Morgan thought for a while and replied that “I am pretty sure that five colors should be sufficient but I won’t be surprised if four colors do the trick as well.”

A simple question asked by a kid eventually lead the mathematicians to one of the most complicated mathematical problem. It took around 125 years to get the answer whether five colors or four are sufficient to color the map.

In 1976, when I was a student of ISI, we received an envelope from XYZ (I forgot the name of the organization). It was a small note inside stating “Four color problem is resolved by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken. They have proved that it is possible to color a map using four colors only, so that no two adjacent regions are of same color.”

It wasn’t just news to us. It was a moment of celebrations for all the students and teachers there. We could see the festival environment in the campus with the news. Eventually one day off was announced in the campus to celebrate this.

Mr Chatterjee ended the story with a small note, “Don’t hesitate to ask questions, your small stupid question might lead to a big invention”.

Are you Galois!!!

It was our mathematics period. Somehow the professor was late, so as usual we were having fun inside the class room. It was a chaos altogether. Suddenly Dr Chatterjee entered the class room and to his surprise a piece of small chalk missed his nose by an inch and hit the wall. Sumit was the culprit. He targeted someone else, but the miss hit almost knocked down Professor Chatterjee.

Professor Chatterjee, the ever smiling teacher of us, turned his head with an angry face and asked “Are you Galois?”

Pin drop silence was all around. Seconds later, Dr Chatterjee burst out laughing.

- “Don’t be scared students; I know that the chalk was not meant for me. Students always enjoy the delay of their professors in the class. And it’s completely my fault that I entered the war front without any notice”.

Our looks were still confused. He read our face quickly and said “Don’t you know Galois?”

By that time we sensed an interesting story is about to set sail. We all shouted together “No, who was he?”

Dr Chatterjee started the story.

In the year 1828, Ecole Normale Superieure was the most prestigious institution for mathematics in France at the time. They had a unique entrance exam named Baccalaureate for those who wanted to pursue Polytechnique. The exam paper always used to have 14 questions where the complexity level increases from question number 1 to 14. Means, question number 1 is the easiest among all and question number 14 is the toughest. They had a cut off marks also which I don’t remember.

Our Mr. Galois appeared for this exam and he answered only question number 12, 13 and 14. At the end he wrote “Rests are trivial”. Though he answered three of the toughest questions, but overall his score was below the cut off, so he didn’t qualify.

Next year, he again appeared in the exam, again he answered last three questions only and wrote “Rests are trivial”. This time professors did notice him. They wondered who that crazy guy was. They called Galois for a personal interview. When they saw a teenage boy entered the class room, they were shocked. They couldn’t digest the fact that this teenage lad had solved those complex stuffs. For further examination, they gave the boy another complex theorem to prove on the black board. Galois started explaining the theorem, but after 10 minutes of explanation he realized that none of the professor was able to understand what exactly he was explaining.

Galois got irritated and threw the chalk and left the class room.

Dr Chatterjee completed the story and sat on the chair.

- “That’s why I asked you my dear student whether you are Galois or not?”

None of us were able to suppress the curiosity to know who this Galois is.

Dr Chatterjee continued, “Galois was one of the most talented young mathematicians the world has ever seen. His work laid the foundations for Galois Theory, a major branch of abstract algebra, and the subfield of Galois connections. He was the first to use the word ‘group’ as a technical term in mathematics to represent a group of permutations. But this young mathematician died only at the age of 21. Definitely the world had lost a potential talent. “

Disclaimer: I heard this story long back from Dr Chatterjee. Honestly I didn't remember each of the facts (those names are damn tough to remember), so I have taken help of wiki and other internet documentation to reconstruct the story. Please correct me if anything is misleading.