Billy Nagiah
their sights on a Merebank house, into which they moved in May 1962.
Billy gently chides his spouse in their native tongue, Telegu, for not being quick enough with the snacks for their guests. She shoots him a radiant smile nurtured by seasoned intimacy as she trots into the dining room with a plate of piping hot goolgoolas (vetkoek/ amagwinya).
I take my seat at the table while my fellow interviewer, Danny, settles into a comfy sofa. The three know each other well, having grown up in different districts of the barracks, with Billy coming from number 23 in N1 Block.
The Nagiahs knew in advance that our visit was both social and serious. The book remembering life in the barracks was taking shape. Various people had already told us that no book would be complete without a mention of the legendary pugilist.
But Billy was more than a boxer ruling the local and national flyweight and bantamweight divisions of black boxers between 1955 and 1959.
He would most likely have been a hit on the international circuit had he plucked up the courage to leave the country with an English sweetheart he had met on his newspaper rounds.
He was also a dazzling footballer with Manning Rangers and Sunrise, and he captained Leicester City Football Club.
Trying his hand at another ballgame, he also played cricket for Madras Cricket Club.
Perhaps somewhat incongruously, he was also a leading light on the Magazine Barracks Library Committee.
I can’t imagine either Mike Tyson or David Beckham with a book, but Billy is as erudite as a poet on acid.
Six decades after the destruction of their library, he talks about resurrecting it as a technology centre on the advice of his tech-savvy son, Clyde.
His only son was named after the great Wentworth boxer, Clyde Campbell, with whose family he still enjoys a close relationship.
Billy knocked Campbell out in the third round in 1956 and continues to admire him greatly.
Their other children have made homes elsewhere. The eldest, Katherine, is a librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast.
(Her son, Aaron Monteith, is planning for the Nagiah’s first great-grandchild to arrive in July/ August.)
Victorine and Melissa followed Clyde.
The couple have also been blessed with six grandchildren.
Billy’s dashing good looks and charming manner made him a hugely successful furniture salesman.
He eventually rose to become a manager at Model Furnishers before retiring in 1988.
He shares a joke about how dispensing calendars at Christmas time ensured his return business. Ordinary folk would walk into the store and coyly ask for a calendar. Less patient salesmen would just point them towards Billy, who readily obliged.
When those people had saved up for an item of furniture or appliance, they would return to the store and seek him out, often saying in Tamil, “that’s our man”.
His phenomenal sales figures, with marketing innovations like giving clients half a sheep against a big purchase, saw him notch up as many accolades as his boxing trophies.
While at Beares Furnishers he won a trip to Italy, where he serenaded Rachel with a Dean Martin classic while on a gondola ride through the waterways of Venice.
Bethesda founder Pastor JF Rowlands married the couple in May 1962and they have remained stalwarts of the church.
Deluxe Stars and the San Remo Dance Band threw them a surprise post-wedding party in the Drama Hall in the barracks.
Billy continues to live life at a pace that most men a quarter of his age would struggle with.
Outside of his well-tended garden, he remains active in the local community and as an officebearer in the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association.
Billy is the gritty stuff heroes are made of – make no mistake.
This is an edited excerpt from Kiru Naidoo’s forthcoming book, “Magazine Barracks – apartheid destruction of a community” commissioned by the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association.