Tony’s full service: kill, cut and burn
SAGAR was in a serious relationship with Bilkish. The problem was that she had absolutely no idea. No one dared interfere for fear of becoming one of Tony’s statistics.
Tony was a part-time block man at Stella’s butchery in the shopping centre of my Bangladesh market district in Chatsworth.
The short-sleeve-and-tie clerks at the Indian Affairs Department in Stanger Street listed Tony on Sagar’s birth certificate under the column for father.
Our main fears did not centre on the butchery, but rather the crematorium. As Sassy Bobby’s number one hit man, Tony’s reputation was that he ran a full-service – kill, cut and burn operation.
His mate, who ran the incinerator at the crematorium, was known for two things: a broken nose and keeping the crematorium open till late.
Word was that six-footfive Khula had kicked Tony rather viciously in the toolbox during a teenage altercation, leaving him with boiled eggs.
No one dared whisper a word about Sagar’s paternity for obvious reasons. Tony loved the boy to bits, carrying him on his shoulders wherever they went in the township.
Sagar had the birth defect of a bad leg, which was corrected with an equally bad prosthesis from Clairwood Hospital.
His walking was like the motion of rowing a boat. Watching him and Bilkish come home from Summit Primary School was like keeping track of a gondola on Niagara Falls.
There was violence in every step as he bravely dragged himself along.
School for Sagar was slightly further away than for the rest of us.
The reason was that Mr Sooful, the vice-principal at Cavendish, was insistent that Sagar should go to a school for the physically challenged.
Not even a threatening phone call from Sassy Bobby could change his mind.
Sassy was named after the shiny five cent coin which was the flat fee for any job he did in the early days.
The principal at Summit was gently prevailed upon to list Sagar as able-bodied. You wouldn’t doubt that watching Sagar lift weights beneath his back yard mango tree.
His dumbbells were paint tins filled with concrete and joined by sawn-off metal bars.
Sagar’s name popped into my mind this week, as I caught CNN’S Fareed Zakaria’s weekly book recommendation.
He’s been talking up The Body Builders by Adam Piore. It is a foray into bioengineering, “which can be used to reverse engineer, rebuild and augment human beings”.
Piore has researched people who have regrown parts of their fingers and legs after experiencing traumas.
He looks at muscle suits that enable the wearers to lift incredible weights with their fingertips.
There is research on “Viagra for the brain,” which could presumably be our answer to Alzheimer’s.
He also talks about doctors looking to have mutes communicate telepathically.
The bionic human being might be only a few years away. That thought is scarier than offending Tony or telling Sagar that Bilkish is happily married to her neighbour.
• Higgins promotes #Readingrevolution at Books@antiquecafe in Windermere and #Hashtagbooks in Shannon Drive in Reservoir Hills. Find him on Facebook as The Bookseller of Bangladesh.