I'm-a gonna get married pretty damn soon, he says, and for an instant the listener could be forgiven for thinking he comes from Rome, but that would be a mistake.

Roshan is from Perambur, a town in south India's Chennai. He rooms, however, with an Italian, whose accent he unconsciously borrows, much like the t-shirt he is wearing, proclaiming, ‘Viva Florence'.

"After dinner I will take-a the walk down the street to the telephone booth and make-a the call to my amma [mother]." Roshan's mother, one learns, is more nervous than he, although it is his marriage that is being arranged.

"It's-a my life," he says with a rueful chuckle, "but it's-a giving them, how do you say? Chickens?"

"Kittens," I venture.

"Ah, scaredy cats," he says, slipping momentarily into Australian usage, adding, "I'm-a the one before the firing squad." Of course, he is joking, for he proclaims, "She will be my life," thereby negating the earlier marriage-means-death metaphor.

He has pictures of his bride-to-be. They have Skyped a few times — he using the roommate's laptop and web cam. "I will buy laptop and desktop, camera and shamera after she comes here," he says, crossing back into southern-Indian rhetoric.

What is a shamera, one might well ask, but one doesn't if one knows that rhyming words, sometimes invented ones like shamera, are twinned with real words in speech, among some Indian speakers.

Roshan met me through a Korean student I help occasionally with spoken English; for no remuneration, I might add. That's an important point, because Roshan, before he got introduced to me, volunteered to take over teaching the Korean English, for a small fee and a weekly movie.

After we met over a cup of coffee, of course, he abandoned all attempt at being an instructor and volunteered to be another pupil. "It's free, right?" he clarified, not once but three times.

For the first week my mobile rang more times than it has been prepared to. Frantic enquiries ensued.

Crooked business

"What does it mean when a fellow says, ‘I am crook and can't come to work'? Crook is about cheating, right? Is a-this guy in trouble and the police are, maybe, making-a the investigation?"

Or, "What means ‘ropable'? I will give an example: My boss told me, ‘Use-a the spoon, mate. If customers see you dip-a the finger into the curry and taste it they can become ropable.'"

Roshan worked part time at a cafe.

I had, in those first months, been as accommodating as I was able to. Dinners got interrupted, work at the office got put on hold till an expression or usage was made clear. It took a while to realise that the one thing Roshan never ever did was say ‘thank you'.

With that came the added realisation that he didn't apologise either for interrupting your day.

I once wanted some advice myself on catering. "I just don't have-a the time, yaar," said Roshan.

I stopped taking his calls months ago. Then, last month, he began ringing again, incessantly. I ignored every call.

Recently, I ran into his Italian roommate who informed me Roshan himself had become seriously ‘crook' over something he'd eaten and had had to be flown back home for emergency surgery.

"Not being able to contact you was one of his biggest disappointments," said his roommate. Roshan had been ringing to thank me for helping him speak English with greater confidence.

 

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.