Who ultimately decides which members of the offshore team will be allocated to your development team? If it's the offshore managers, then you have bigger worries than the intern. If it's you, then why did you allow an offshore intern on to your development team in the first place given that you know you don't have time to mentor him correctly? If it's your boss (or your boss' boss), then why did they make that decision? Personally, I'd never accept an offshore intern simply because you have to hold their hand for a very long time; they're interning because they can't get a paying job due to lack of knowledge.

We have been working with an offshore team for quite some time. My manager interviewed the potential team members and decided who he wanted to work with us. Many (maybe most or even all by now) of those people are members here.

Even though my manager picked the best that the offshore team had to offer, we have had to mentor them the entire time. You are always going to have to give suggestions to the new team members regardless of their location so in that regard using offshore resources is not all that different from using in-house resources. Of course, in-house resources take less time to mentor.

The intern can't afford to buy a book... Are there libraries in Delhi and do they have Perl books? Before I bought my first Perl book, I started reading everything I could find out about it over the internet. Get the guy to sign up here and have him start reading the Tutorials; specifically Getting Started With Perl and Functions, Subroutines, and Variables. There are plenty of exercises to be found here to keep him busy learning for years to come.