Koffee at Katte

Julius Caesar once said, 'I came, I saw, I conquered' . However, this has been rephrased to "We came, we saw, we sat," at BMS College of Engineering at Basavanagudi. Anyone who walks into the college premises should visit Katte, the stone slab, which the students claim it as the 'heart of the college' . For, hanging out at Katte with Kumar's coffee in one's hand is not only 'kattecious' , (read contagious), but magnetic too.
Katte - comprising the stone slab under the shade of a tree, and a playground - is a traditional yet cool hangout for students . Any fresher walking into the college gets to know her seniors "through an introductory meeting at Katte" , recalls Harshvardhan Gupta, a first-year student who joined the college last month. "On my first day, I was totally lost. I didn't know anybody except for a senior who I knew through a social networking site. He just asked me to meet him at Katte. Till then, I didn't know anything about it. But when I reached there, I was introduced to a bunch of seniors. And now, it has become a habit to visit Katte first and then go to class," he said.
Nishanth S Coontoor, a second-year student , says that meetings, discussions of various cultural meets and annual festivals including heartbreaks and proposals take place at Katte. As an initiative to make Katte popular among the freshers, some of the seniors even went to the extent of wearing Katte T-shirts with the age-old tree embossed on them. Such is the allure of the place that students don't mind hanging around from early morning till late in the evening. Prashanth Kumar, a secondyear student, holds the record of being glued to the Katte for eight hours at a stretch. A purely dedicated Katte person, he says, "On an average, a student spends a minimum of two hours per day here.''
A former student of the college, Suneel Raghavendra, says, "Those who passed out 30 years ago still remember their days at Katte. You can see people playing chess or basketball, or simply sitting and chatting."
Further, Kumar's coffee shop at Katte, not only serves a hot cuppa but is also a place where students leave their helmets, mobile phones, bags or messages for their friends. Mahesh, who has been working at the coffee shop for the past two years, shares a good rapport with the students. He says, "We've developed a special bond with them. Some of them drink coffee on credit and pay after a week or month. They even share their classroom jokes with us."
But one can't miss seeing everybody's beloved Pekru, who doesn't allow any other dog to step into the Katte zone. The brown dog has bonded so well with the students that they ensure Pekru remains the 'king of Katte' , forever.