The Priceless Duda

Every group has a star and without a doubt the star of this Batch 77 is Sudhir Jacob alias Duda. Duda is priceless, one of his kind. I am sure the mould in which he was created got damaged so he can never be replicated. His goof ups and the many words that escape between the cup and the lip have now assumed legendary status. In fact he is adept in adding to his own collections of hilarious anecdotes and episodes.

When I met him first he was dressed as a quasi politician which I later on learnt was his way of bonding with a close relative, politician. On that summer evening seated on his terrace he explained that all the hay strewn about on the terrace was only to make the air-conditioning more effective. He even went on to give me figures like 30% to which the whole crowd expressed surprise …. They never new that he could count beyond 20! Then on till I left Jabalpur there were many an occasions when Duda displayed his ability for creating humor. Be it the love letters (including the early ones written to his wife) that he made his friend write, the telephone calls that his friend made to girls impersonating him, the only line he ever managed to speak to a date “Do you have an eraser?”, his bicycle sojourns in mid afternoon around a prospective girl friends house….. oh the list is endless.

Duda is the toast of all the parties purely for his entertainment value. I have known people reschedule their parties only to accommodate the very crucial presence of Duda. He is a doctor’s delight! There is no cure that he has not tried for a host of ailments imagined and otherwise. Naturally his half baked knowledge of medicines has led him to eat “fetusguard” instead of “peptoguard” to cure acidity. He beats all in goof ups mostly at his cost, like a panic call to the frustrated local Vet to insist that his male dog is on heat.

But our Duda is adorable…He loves the booze and shows rare ingenuity to hide the number of pegs downed from his wife. His hiding spots ranhe from flower pots to commode tanks. Though he prefers scotch, in desperate times just about anything works for him and that too in any measures of combination. At the end of such binges he is all mushy and sentimental and breaks into English! E.g. “Thank you for fucking me royally” I am sure he picked that up from someplace

. The rest of the world really does not exist for him. In this small world he lives happily with his really sweet wife and four lovely kids. His world begins and ends with his farm and the church for purely economic reasons. So, when we were to drive off to Bangalore he was full of concern for our safety as Karnataka was burning …. demanding for the creation of a new state Telengana.