Ingles en Extranjero 4 (Version en español)

SURESH’S STORY

John James Carty writes:

In our search for a house we met Suresh, an owner of a boarding house. Suresh came from Bangladesh although he’d lived in the UK for many years.

He was a very interesting man. He had decided that if he was going to be in the business of providing rooms for students of English from abroad, he was going to work hard at it.

Warrior Square, Hastings

Parque de los Guerreros, Hastings

His house was adapted to accommodate three students in each room; a total of twenty seven students. At this level Suresh was operating a money-making machine, working much harder than I had ever intended.

The deal is that the hosts provide breakfast and an evening meal for all their students. Although these meals are usually basic, they involve a lot of work – especially for twenty seven people.

In addition, the cleaning is a full-time job; the sheets on the beds are changed and washed once a week and the normal sweeping and washing of floors is more onerous with over twenty students living there.

I never found out what the students did about their personal laundry.

I must say that Suresh did not claim that his house had been inspected or approved by any college or local authority. I suspect that it had never been inspected. But, according to him, it was always full.

Roedean School near Brighton.

Perhaps the most famous girls' school in Europe.

Photo: www. brighton-network.com

I believed him – the house was clean enough inside but the air was heavy and the walls seemed to be sweating.

However, Suresh had one advantage that we didn’t have – he had a basement that was as broad and as long as the whole house. I was not anxious to visit his cellar, as I thought it might contain another twenty beds lined up like an army barracks.

But it was a big surprise: a full-scale disco complete with strobes, colored lights, a dance floor and a professional disc jockey console.

It was a monument to 1970s bad taste, but Suresh loved it passionately. And so did his students and their friends – this was the ‘hottest’ house in town!

Although twenty seven students is a lot, Suresh was aggrieved that he sometimes played host to many more: ‘At night I have to watch the door like a hawk,’ he told me, ‘because they bring their friends back and sometimes these friends don’t have anywhere to live, so they sleep here. I’m sure I’ve had ten people in a room sometimes, and I only get paid for three.’

Many of Suresh’s students came from countries in the former Soviet Union and he gave me the impression that they weren’t exactly ‘official’. They seemed to attend small schools which take no responsibility for student accommodation.

After a few years, Suresh thought he had seen everything but he was still incredulous as he told me about the night the police raided his house:

‘I was astonished, man. We had never had any trouble with the police here. We knew the private disco was very loud but we also knew it was soundproof, so I couldn’t think what the police wanted.’

As it turned out, the Hastings police, on instructions from the National Immigration Service, wanted to track down two runaway Russian boys aged ten and twelve.

‘My whole top floor was Russian, we used to call it “Little Moscow” Suresh explained, ‘but all the registered guests were certainly over eighteen.’

The English cops, being rather more cynical than Suresh, pounded up the stairs. There was, as the saying goes, ‘no hiding place.’ The two little boys were found in one of the Russian rooms.

The other Russian students were all beginners, who very wisely didn’t speak much English, so the police and Suresh had to wait until 2 am while an interpreter was brought from Brighton to resolve matters.

No one suggested activating the disco during the long wait.

Whatever the interpreter told the police, it was good enough to exonerate Suresh. The police left with the boys, three social workers and a very tired interpreter.

As he recounted all this, Suresh still couldn’t believe it, ‘I mean, ten and twelve years old! How did they ever get into the country? It beats me.’

In later years Suresh converted the disco into an apartment for his family and his life became less strenuous.

When I met him he was selling the house simply because he couldn’t sustain the effort of housing nearly thirty young people for around forty weeks of the year.

But he had been well rewarded: in discussing the income prospects for his property he had to disclose his figures to me. I never saw a happier looking man as he explained to me what 27 students over forty weeks by ten years amounted to. It was a lot.

Learning English Abroad 1 - introduction

Learning English Abroad 2 - Jacinto Interview

Learning English Abroad 3 -Sam working in London