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.