There are those who can sing ... and those who absolutely must not! Like my neighbour on the left-hand side, a personable young man from the state of Gujarat, in India. It’s an unkind, ungenerous thing to say, but I’ll say it any way ... if anyone in real life reminded me of the infamous Cacophonix (of the Asterix & Obelix comic book fame) then Parthiv does. Mind you, I am the last one to be casting aspersions. A stampede would ensue (in the opposite direction) were I to exercise my vocal chords. Which is why I feel suitably qualified to be judgmental.

“You could sing the hind legs off a donkey,” they used to tell me when I was young and unwittingly unleashed momentary bouts of auditory torture upon those near ones who found themselves to be in the vicinity — wrong place, wrong time!

Thanks to their guidance — vindictive and vicious though it may have appeared — I have since learned to sing silently to myself (that is, in my head, which surprisingly has been able to cope with any note I’ve thrown out there and has still been holding up after all these years. Given the number of times it’s been exposed to Stairway to Heaven, you’d have thought the mental edifice would have crumbled by now. But no, I can still sing to myself — my audience of one — and end up feeling rather exhilarated by the experience.)

However, I have, as stated earlier, long since refrained from tossing melody around with volume attached to it. I have learned to demur, as it were, when I’ve found myself suddenly confronted by a karaoke machine at a friend’s party. I usually ask in advance if such side-lights are part of the proceedings, before I agree to go in the first place.

Parthiv, my neighbour, evidently has been receiving encouragement of a different kind. I’m tempted to believe he’s even been told at some point that he’s the next best thing after Dylan (although I agree that Dylan’s not the best choice of singer to link with as a comparative. Still ... okay, George Michael.)

As my friend Barney pointed out not so long ago, Dylan would never get past the audition stage of any of these reality singing competitions held on television. In saying that, I’m not sure if Barney, too, was making a subtle, discreet, plea on Parthiv’s behalf. What Barney seems to be saying is look at what Dylan is to music today, although we all know he hasn’t got the best voice, or even the 50th-best voice of all time! “Also Eminem, and Snoop Dogg, er, Lion,” added Barney.

“They’re rappers, Barney, not singers,” I had to point out the obvious, “They speak their lyrics because lyrics is all they got and the words are paramount and the music gets in the way of the message, subtracts from the issue under discussion, blah blah ...”

Now Parthiv, I have a good feeling about this, will make a decent rapper. He’d be more capable of ‘delivering’ a lyric given his monotone, than singing it, given his tone-deafness. “Well we’ve got to do something about it, then,” opined Barney, who finally got to hear the venerable Parthiv in full musical flow one morning.

Cue to three weeks later ... Parthiv’s apartment. A small snack party. Barney, Parthiv, two of his workmates and me. We’re playing a game of ‘Guess the Voice’ ... Barney is playing pre-recorded snatches of singers, which we all have to guess ... Elton John, Neil Young, Michael Buble, even Maurice Chevalier ... and then, after 30 or so rounds, the unmistakable monotone!

“Yuk, who’s that?” asks Parthiv, incredulously, damning himself instantly.

We all have a good-natured semi-non-judgmental laugh. Parthiv, who is fair, reddens.

It’s been a week now. Not a peep out of the neighbour. Parthiv is wearing headphones, shaking his head to the beat, but like me he appears to have twigged on to the art of ‘inward singing’. Lesson learned.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.