T&T...The secrets of the chair barber
BACK in the 1980s, a big old wooden house containing a barber shop on Union Road, Marabella, became the subject of interest to police detectives trying to unravel the dealings of reputed drug lord Dole Chadee.Chadee, who lived in nearby Piparo, came to the shop twice weekly.But since he didn’t appear to need a haircut or to shave his pencil moustache that often, the cops thought there was something fishy going on there.How long they snooped around, watching the place, is unknown, but had one of them come in undercover for a trim, they would have known Chadee’s purpose.
It was the same reason that hundreds of others made frequent visits to barber Lionel Sooknanan, known to most as Mr Lio.For close to 70 years, the man had been adviser and counsellor to anyone who shared a problem, growing wise from listening to a cross-section of people of different ethnicities and ages, social standings and class, and sharing that knowledge with everyone. There were no appointments here.Seating arrangements were sparse. Four uncomfortable chairs and a wooden bench.No post-trim loafers allowed either.Sooknanan was born in 1927, in the very spot where he ran the salon. He was the first child to Mabel and husband David, who was a pipe-fitter at Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd (later to be called Petrotrin).Back then, it was a carat-roofed home surrounded by houses of tapia, located near banks of rice fields and sugar plantations, with the entire San Fernando Hill rising in the distance, and the steam locomotive shaking the house as it travelled the railway line running to the back of the Sooknanan property.
Sooknanan would open his own salon on High Street in the ’50s and end up with another infamous customer far more deadly than Dole Chadee, who along with eight others was hanged for his crimes in 1999.Sooknanan said Boysie Singh, the smuggler/pirate/gambler whose gang was said to be responsible for the murders of as many as 400 people, talked like a schoolteacher and blamed the authorities for making him a criminal when they seized the boats he used to move his contraband from Venezuela.Singh, who would hang in 1957 for one murder, had to pay for his haircut, too—36 cents.
Sooknanan died on September 9 of pandemic year 2020.His funeral would likely have been the biggest and longest that Marabella would have ever seen, given the number of people he reached.Instead, ten people were allowed at the last rites.So we use the opportunity to celebrate his life here.
It was the same reason that hundreds of others made frequent visits to barber Lionel Sooknanan, known to most as Mr Lio.For close to 70 years, the man had been adviser and counsellor to anyone who shared a problem, growing wise from listening to a cross-section of people of different ethnicities and ages, social standings and class, and sharing that knowledge with everyone. There were no appointments here.Seating arrangements were sparse. Four uncomfortable chairs and a wooden bench.No post-trim loafers allowed either.Sooknanan was born in 1927, in the very spot where he ran the salon. He was the first child to Mabel and husband David, who was a pipe-fitter at Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd (later to be called Petrotrin).Back then, it was a carat-roofed home surrounded by houses of tapia, located near banks of rice fields and sugar plantations, with the entire San Fernando Hill rising in the distance, and the steam locomotive shaking the house as it travelled the railway line running to the back of the Sooknanan property.
Sooknanan would open his own salon on High Street in the ’50s and end up with another infamous customer far more deadly than Dole Chadee, who along with eight others was hanged for his crimes in 1999.Sooknanan said Boysie Singh, the smuggler/pirate/gambler whose gang was said to be responsible for the murders of as many as 400 people, talked like a schoolteacher and blamed the authorities for making him a criminal when they seized the boats he used to move his contraband from Venezuela.Singh, who would hang in 1957 for one murder, had to pay for his haircut, too—36 cents.
Sooknanan died on September 9 of pandemic year 2020.His funeral would likely have been the biggest and longest that Marabella would have ever seen, given the number of people he reached.Instead, ten people were allowed at the last rites.So we use the opportunity to celebrate his life here.
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