While in India, I learned two words that I thought warranted a bit more investigation: masala and wallah.
Most are probably familiar with the word masala. At first I thought it just meant a specific mixture of spices, to be used in the same way you might use the word Panang to describe a particular kind of curry paste; that's how you often hear it used, e.g. chicken masala, or masala chai. But I soon discovered that not only is the culinary use of the word more general than that (Masala can be used as a synonym for spice mix and doesn't necessarily mean one specific mixture of spices), but masala is often used to describe other things that may contain "mixes". Some Bollywood movies are called masala movies because they have such a mix of elements -- song, dance, acting, etc.
Some of my favorite instances of Masala were Lays Magic Masala chips, Masala Chai, of course, and as hinted in a previous post, Paan Masala.
On to wallah. At first I thought this meant anyone (usually a guy, in India) who has something they are trying to sell you, and I used it interchangeably with toute and hawker.
From the Dictionary of Difficult Words:
wallah
n. person employed in certain capacity or connected with a certain thing or activity; -worker; -carrier
But conversations with Indian friends leads me to believe that again, Wallah can be a more general term added after a variety of words to mean guy or dude; paan wallah means paan guy/dude and rickshaw wallah means rickshaw guy/dude. Of course, as the Dictionary of Difficult Words hints at, these wallahs are invariably trying to sell you their paan or rickshaw services, but from what I gather wallah doesn't have to connotate active selling and hawking, as I once thought.