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.

Something money cant buy

Long back, one day dad asked me to help him arranging his files and stuffs. He was cleaning his cabinet. When you dig into old piled up stuffs, sometimes you do find interesting things. Whenever I open my Grandmother’s glass door cabinet, I find something or other very interesting. Dad’s childhood photo, my old school badge, few sea shells we gathered long back in Puri. These things always take me back to that age. But in my dad’s files, I didn’t expect any such interesting things, so the job was pretty boring for me. Suddenly I found a diary. I have never seen my dad writing anything in diary, so I was very happy finding the diary. I took out a pen to write my name on the first page to establish my ownership before my sister even come to know about it. The moment I opened the diary, I found a dirty black colored stuff inside it wrapped with some small piece of very old news paper.
- “Eeik!!!! What’s that dad? It must be some kinda insect, died in the fold of the diary”. I threw the diary on the ground. Some part of the dirty stuff came out of the diary and scattered on the floor.
Dad smiled and took the diary in his hand, carefully kept the shabby thing back into the diary pages; I don’t know what it was but certainly not a fossil of any insect. It was something my dad wants to cherish. I started feeling bad for throwing the diary without knowing what it was. But that didn’t last long smelling a story. I could see the expression on my dad’s face. Certainly he was recollecting something very old, something very special happened in his life. I kept my mouth shut expecting dad to start again.
“You know dear, this apparently dirty stuff means a lot to me”. I dragged my chair near to him.
He continued, I started my career in Block Development Office back in 70s. I was different at that time, a lot more enthusiasm was in me, lot more self believes. I don’t know how the spark faded out from me in these many years. May be in times it happens like this. At that time, every day I wanted to something different but never got a chance to be different than others. One day I noticed a new guy as the sweeper of our mess. Asking others what I came to know is the young guy who used to work here before is ill, so became irregular. That’s why they appointed someone new. I didn’t enquire more on the guy who was ill. Few days after that, I met the guy on the road. I asked him what happened. In reply what he said just stunned me. He was suffering from critical heart disease. I asked him to consult a good doctor and assured him to help if he comes to Kolkata. But he said, he can’t afford the treatment cost. He was the only earning member of the family and that job also he lost because of health condition.
I came back to mess but his words kept me bugging. Once I feel to extend some financial help, but on that time I just started earning, so I couldn’t even have afforded more. I didn’t sleep the entire night. Next day morning I took the writing pad out. I drafted two letters, one to the Prime Minister and another to the Governor of the state. I read in the news paper that both on state and central govt level they have some funding to help poor people. Though I didn’t know how to get that fund, I just gave a shot on that. My expectations were not much from the so called govt processes, but to my surprise I got a reply for both my letters from PM office and Governor Office. In next few days, two inspections took place with the help of local police station regarding the financial condition of that guy. In a month time he got a good treatment in Vellore under Dr. Sunil Sen. He got two cheques, one from central govt of Rs 10,000 and another for Rs 5,000 from state government. Those amounts were not small in those days. Finally in a month time, that guy came back from Vellore. I can’t tell you how great it felt to me seeing him completely cured. And the guy couldn’t say much to thank me, but I read it on his tears. Two months after this I got a job in banking field, so had to leave the place. My farewell was done; all the gifts were packed well in the suitcase. I said good bye to all my friends and neighbors and waiting for the bullock cart to the station. I heard a knock on the door. I turned back and saw the guy, standing just outside of my room. I called him in. we talked for a while and then took out a small thing packed in a piece of news paper from his pocket. He gave that to me and said, “I opened a Pan stall last month. I can’t afford much to give you a good bye gift, so I prepared this special Pan for you. Please have it. I know it’s nothing with compare to the help I got from you. Not only you saved me, you saved my family also. I pray to god everyday to send more people like you”. He was in tears. I took it from him and before I react he ran out of the room. I was running out of time so didn’t get a chance to tell him that he has given me probably the best gift in my entire life. He wanted me to have it, but I thought of keeping this for the last day of my life. It’s not a shabby thing dear, it’s the most precious gift I ever got.
Dad completed his story and took a piece of cloth to clean the diary. I saw a rare drop of tears in my dad’s eyes. At that age, I couldn’t connect myself much to the tears, it was all happy ending, then why tears. But today in a much paced life, I seek that few drops of tears of Happiness.

Can you hear the roar?

The entire county is roaring. Half of the population is shouting for Anna. Rest of the half who doesn’t agree with Anna, are busy grunting against Indian Cricket team. Anna with his team is grumbling against the corruption and the government. Government is cursing Anna & his followers. The intellectual people are debating on news channels. The news channels are shouting to prove themselves best in the business. And when it comes to me, I am just struggling to find the right direction.
With this back drop a few scenes are being staged everyday around me.
Scene 1: Got a forwarded email from someone saying about a rally to support Anna. I decided to join. After the office I came back home and changed to comfortable attire before going to rickshaw stand. The rickshaw drivers were on top of their voice debating. They were debating in support of Anna Hazare. Everyone was in favor of Anna, but still they were aggressively putting their point. To whom? I don’t know.
“JM Road?” I asked. One guy said, “Sit, but 20 Rs extra, its heavy traffic there”. I looked at his face; he was the one who was shouting most against the corruption and dishonesty just a minute back.
I smiled, “you are charging me unethically and claim that you are a supporter of Anna Hazare?”
He said, “This is not corruption. Its just a matter of 20 Rs. See the leaders who are into scam of crores of it. And anyway this is my Dhanda time, cant compromise with it.
I compromised, as I always do.
Scene 2: I am in the rally, its hell lot of people around and good thing is they are not under any political banner. Later I read in the news paper, it was around 25 thousands of people in the rally. I saw an old man, not shouting at all, just calmly walking in the rally. I liked it. He is truly supporting the cause, without seeking any attention.
But we are also here for the same cause. Aren’t we doing the same thing? Probably yes, but I am not sure whether that is the only reason.
Scene 3: A few girls are in front of me wearing white t-shirt with the sleeves folded in style. It looks like they just came out of a party. They are well organized with all their slogans, they had their homework done. Result? A lot of Digital SLR, point & shoot camera’s and even mobile cameras flashing around them. They are happily posing in front of every camera. Definitely they seem to be the face of the rally. If you don’t agree, ask the overexcited boys surrounding the girls.
I heard one guy saying “Dude, I told you that lot of girls are coming and it would be fun. See how right was I”
Scene 4: I walked passed a lot of people in the rally. Now in front of me I can see some school going kids with some middle aged couples, mostly their parents. Everyone is carrying candles. They are trying hard with their small palms to keep the wind away from the candles.
I am surprised. How could these little kids be allowed with candles.
“They are the future, and if it continues like this the corruption will hurt them most. We are just training them to fight against it” – their parents told me.
“But do you believe this is the proper way to protest?”
“We don’t know if this is the proper way, but if you have any other option tell us that. We will do that also. We are desperate to give them a better India.”
I didn’t have answer, if I don’t have a way out, I shouldn’t stop those who are trying to do at least something.
Scene 5: A guy just barged into the rally from a shop beside the road. From his next conversation what I understood is, he successfully bargained in the shop and purchased two candles for Rs 15 each. I was surprised. The candles he bought should not cost more than 5 Rs. Soon I realized it’s the same old story of Demand vs Supply. We are getting charged extra for everything used in Rally, candle, Indian flag, try colored wrist band everything.
At least someone can see his profit with the rally.
Scene 6: The rally is finished. I walked till Sarasbaugh. Now I am sitting in a restaurant and having my dinner. Dinner, it’s a necessity, right? especially after so much of shouting and so much of walking. While eating I heard some people around us talking about their experience about the rally.
“I am feeling so proud that I took part in the rally. From bottom of my heart I support the fasting Anna is doing”. He finished talking and took a big bite on the Chicken Tikka Wrap.
“I have already updated my FB status that I am in the rally” his friend replied.
I didn’t say all these, but somewhat I am doing the same thing, thinking on the same line they are thinking.
Did I really serve the purpose what I actually wanted to?
These are just glimpse of what exactly is happening throughout the country. I am against the corruption; I want to do something against it. But I don’t know the exact method to do it. So when I see someone raising his voice against corruption I am trying to echo him. I would ask everyone to do the same, but before that just know what you are fighting for. Don’t kill the cause with the excitement and don’t seek attention for what you are doing.
Government is saying that it’s not the democratic way to pass a bill. But following the democratic way only we elected the government, if they don’t justify their roles what is the democratic way to protest?
But this protest, the rally, the fasting will not gonna work unless we try to change ourselves. Let’s stop giving out hard earned money as bribe. We should understand, if only few of us act positively then the fight will turn into their struggle. But if every one of us starts working against corruption in our daily work, then there will be no fight. It will be the India our ancestor had dreamt of few hundred years back.

Missing

Have you ever felt missing someone when the person is not around you? Stupid question huh!!! It’s a very common feeling for every one of us. But why do we miss someone? Simple answer, because we love that someone, because that someone has a place in our heart. I guess this is the way of defining a relation. A relation is always the base of the society. Now what would happen to you if the word relation goes out of your life forever making you not missing anyone? Simple mathematics says you will not have the bad feeling of missing someone ever. But life doesn’t understand this math. I am sure most of us can’t even imagine the feeling of not missing anyone. Let’s break it up in smaller pieces. How would one feel on Raksha Bandhan day if he doesn’t have a sister? Same goes through a girl‘s mind if she doesn’t have brother. Those not too lucky people must have a feeling of loneliness seeing others celebrating the day. It often appears a long day for them for sure. But this is just a single day every year of missing a single person. Can you now imagine missing everyone for rest of your life? I bet now you can feel that. It’s bad, it’s very bad, its unbearable right? No, it’s more than what it feels. I wouldn’t even have realized this unless I visited Vidyavati Ashram in Kamshet. It’s a home for more or less 50 orphan kids. Some of them are in Vidyavati before they actually realize the meaning of love, the meaning of parents, the meaning of a relation. Some of them lost their parents in this young age so they are here, it’s definitely sad. But the thing hurt me more when I came to know some of them are actually discarded by their parents. This Orphanage started with a 6 months old girl they found in railway station. As per doctors her survival chance was almost nill. But she survived. If god exists then I must say the almighty couldn’t able to give her parental love but she got some very special people around her.

To be Continued……

Ambition

What do you want to be in your life? Did you ask this question to anyone. You certainly did, don’t you? Do you remember what kind of different answers you got till date? Okay forget it, rethink of your answers if somebody would have asked you this at the age of 5 or may be at the age of 10. Well well well I don’t know about what went through all your childhood thoughts but I certainly remember mine. Let me share those wild and weird ambitions.
Before that let me tell you something we used to do in Bengali culture (not sure about others). In bengal we have a ritual called “Annaprashon”. This is the ritual when the little fellows eat their first rice. It takes place when they are at the age between 5-7 months. During this ritual, elders keep certain stuffs in front of the kid like a book, a pen, a pair of small scissors, coins etc and wait for the kid to pick something up. If the kid picks up pen that means he/she will be interested in literature. Similarly coins indicate businessman, scissors indicate doctor and so on. This is really fun to watch. That’s the baby’s first bite on AMBITION.
As the days go on, the ambition keeps changing with lot of factors. These factors involve some serious bullet points. “Capability”, “Expense of the Course”, “Earning from that profession”, “Prestige” and some more.
Note that I didn’t include “Interest” in this list. Actually that is the prime factor of an ambitions. But with the circumstances, that always takes back seat. These factors always suppress the desire, the craziness, the will. Examples are very obvious, a person with less IQ level cannot manage to get through any ambitions which needs lot of brainwork, for example a scientist. A boy from a poor family has to think 1000 times before opting for an expensive course to fulfill his ambitions and 999 out of1000 times he would change his mind. Just compare yourself as a cricketer and as a kabaddi player, that would justify the affect of earning on ambition. And last but not the least is prestige. Have you ever seen a drama on stage? If yes then close your eyes and compare the stage actor’s acting skill with the silver/golden screen actors acting skill. One who loves acting would definitely go for stage theater but the question of Prestige would always keep them bugging.
Not only these, the pressure of society is also a big factor on the ambition. Successful doctors would always want their successors to be in medical profession coz they have seen how noble the profession is when they do justice to it. A govt officer always dreams about his kids to be an IAS officer because in his mind that’s the highest position he would have ever imagined. A lawyer knows his son is always prospect of good lawyer with all the contacts he made in his life. And in India film industry and politics are two fields where people believe talent is hereditary. But again I would say these are to some extend positive reservation. There are other negative effects as well. Like a conservative family never sees their kids going for a film or fashion industry. A businessman always turns down his son to go for any salaried job. All these are basic instinct I believe, very hard to change.
With all these in mind, the definition of ambition doesn’t stand its ground anymore. The main pillar “Interest” is losing its priority from the Ambition.
Anyway, it’s always a never ending debate. I started this with a lighter mood but eventually went to the serious world. Now I am going to my childhood days when an ambition was completely independent of anything in this world other than what I liked to do.
Have you seen hand cart ever? In Kolkata I have seen plenty of them carrying lot of stuffs. Not sure they are still there or not. So using the cart lots of people used to carry big ice blocks from ice factory to different preservative farms (like fish market etc). On those days, ice factory was beyond my imagination. In my thought the one and only source of that big amount of ice was Kashmir. So I was under impression that these guys go to Kashmir everyday and bring ice from there. I was very curious about Kashmir because on those days also Kashmir was always in headlines because of terrorism and natural beauty. So that became my first ambition.
My second ambition was a taxi driver. The one and only reason behind this was just roaming around in the city in a car without spending a single paisa.
However that ambition didn’t last long as Byomkesh Bokshi and Karamchand entered into the scene. Not only Byomkesh Bokshi, there are several other detective novels I started reading. You might have noticed the dramatic pictures in detective books with dark glasses, black gloves etc. No wonder that attracted me the most. As a result next 2-3 years I was completely equipped with woolen gloves, lots of different kind of toy guns, dad’s black sunglass and grandfather’s pipe (only pipe). Most of the time my face used to be covered with a handkerchief. The makeup accessories were also part of my detective kit. The Ponds powder (for white hair) and sister’s eye pencil (for drawing mustache) might not be the most expensive makeup kit one could have but sufficient for the great detective like me. Due to the lack of interesting cases around me, I couldn’t continue this ambition anymore. And by that time I realized it’s my time to be on the action ground, not to be in a dark room sitting on a easy chair sorting out a complicated murder case. Continuing on that thoughts, Police Officer and then Army Officer was two certain options I could see. So all the small toy guns went inside the packing box and with Grand Ma’s great support soon I created my own inventory with big toy guns. But I needed some bunkers to fight with enemies. With no wonder all the pillows came to my help. I used to pile up all the pillows to make the bunker. That gave me the complete environment.
When I grown up a little more, we started travelling different famous places in India. Most of the time with some travel groups. I saw every time one person used to brief about the place before we start. After a long time I found something to make my ambition. Honestly today also when I have visited many places in India and US, I still find that as ambition. That is one thing I can do at any age of my life. But again that will be a new story altogether.
With these there were some short and simple ambitions popped up throughout my early teenage like playing table, painting etc, but never appeared very interesting. Right now I am not able to recollect any more funny ambitions I had except one. And the final one is Cricket. Well this is one which was always in my mind. In every alternate I used to see myself as a cricket player. Believe me today also when India needs 50 runs from 19 balls, first things comes to my mind is re-considering my ambition of being a cricketer.
To conclude this, what I believe is ambition is what you want to be. It might not be having any relation with how much would you earn, what is your age, how will you achieve this. A 70 year old person can should also have an ambitions. An ambition gives you a meaning to your life if not anything else.