Anita Baksh is Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York (CUNY). Her teaching and research focus on Caribbean literature, gender studies, and composition.
Ian Harnarine’s film Doubles (2023) is a story about migration and family. As Trinidadian writer Andre Bagood notes, “Not the tennis game but the inter-nationally acclaimed street food from Trinidad,” inspires the film’s title. According to Bagoo, the snack, made up of two fried flat breads filled with curried channa, is “a thing of contradiction. Deep-fried and hearty, yet totally vegan. Soft, delicate, yet solid and meaty. Neatly wrapped for eaters on the go, yet messy, drenched in finger-licking deliciousness. One word, both singular and plural – like barracks, binoculars, shorts. Seemingly everywhere, but available only at certain times and certain places. Morning and nights. Never in restaurants, always roadsides, under tents, or off mobile carts- Trinidad’s version of the trendy food truck.”
Doubles portrays the story of a family of street vendors who sell doubles and struggle to survive in rural Trinidad. The son Dhani (played by Sanjiv Boodhu) embarks on a journey to Canada to find his father Ragbir (played by Errol Sitahal), who migrated when Dhani was a young boy and did not keep his promise to send for the family. Dhani and his mother (played by Leela Sitahal) believe that the only way for them to make their lives better is to get the deed for their home from Ragbir. Angry and hurt, Dhani sets out to Canada in search of his father.
Dhani believes Ragbir is living a life of luxury; friends and relatives of friends macoing (the Trinidadian term for gossping), claim to have seen Ragbir driving in a new SUV and living with another woman in a big, big house in Canada. For viewers of Caribbean descent, these stories are all too familiar. For instance, when I migrated from Guyana to the U.S. as a little girl in the late 1980s, my mother told me a story about a close friend who posed in front of a Manhattan skyscraper, took a picture, developed it, and mailed it back home to relatives in his village in Berbice, Guyana, telling them that he lived in that building. In reality, he lived in a cramped apartment with roommates in an overcrowded area of the Bronx.
The film is neither a prequel or sequel to Harnarine’s short film, Doubles with Slight Pepper (2015). While it shares some similarities with its predecessor, Doubles is a distinct project. For example, in the full length feature the son goes to Canada in search of the father instead of the father returning to Trinidad. This key difference allows Harnarine to explore nuances of the Caribbean immigrant experience that were not feasible in the short version. Through Ragbir’s narrative, Doubles shows the realities of working-class Caribbean migrants in Western cities who often have little resources to gain socio-economic mobility, much less to help those left back home.
At the heart of the film is how migration from the Caribbean to North America has impacted the relationship of this father and son; the pain, the loss, and their inability to understand one another. For instance, migration and land mean different things to each of them. Dhani aims to get from Ragbir what he believes he is owed: money and land. Selling the land would allow Dhani and his mother to open a take-out restaurant, moving their business from the street into a storefront. It would mean being able to offer more food options to generate more income. And it would mean safety; his elderly mother would no longer deal with the risks of selling on the quiet, lonely, dark streets of rural Trinidad in early mornings and late nights. It would also mean a change in status from a street vendor with a “nasty doubles stand” (Dhani’s words) to a proper business owner.
For Ragbir, the land represents the labour and heritage of his ancestors; he tells Dhani that the land belonged to Dhani’s Aja (paternal grandfather), Ragbir’s father, and to Ragbir’s Aja (Dhani’s great grandfather). This sentiment subtly alludes to Indian Trinidadian heritage and the experience of Indian indentureship; the land is tied to the hardships of generations of ancestors who toiled on sugar and cacao plantations post emancipation. But for Dhani, holding on to the land continues cycles of poverty and working-class struggles that are rooted in plantation labor; Dhani expresses this idea in the last line of the film, where he says “I come from a long line of stupid coolies.” Additionally, he keenly recognizes that this cycle of poverty and exploitative labour continues in Canada through his father’s experience as a restaurant worker who washes dishes and lives in the basement of the restaurant owner’s home. Dhani powerfully says to Ragbir: “So he give you money to work in his restaurant and you give him back that same money to live in his basement apartment?” (my paraphrase).
The film is also a celebration of the ways in which Caribbean cultures travel to and are recreated in diaspora, particularly through food and music. Specifically, Guyanese and Jamaican foods are highlighted through popular dishes, pepperpot and jerk chicken, respectively. For instance, Guyanese Canadian character Anita (played by Rashaana Cumberbatch), Ragbir’s coworker and unofficial adopted daughter, introduces Dhani to pepperpot. Interestingly, her dream to preserve Caribbean culture is tied to food; her goal is to open a food truck that serves delicious Caribbean dishes full of spices that cater to Caribbean people, rather than bland Caribbean dishes that cater to white people. A love of Caribbean food and shared sense of Caribbeanness allow the film’s characters to bond across national origins, generations, and race.
A sense of Caribbean community is further seen in the film when Anita takes Dhani to a West Indian club. In cities with large Caribbean populations like Toronto and New York City, clubs are important spaces to express Caribbean identities, where first generation immigrants and their children access Caribbean music and express themselves through dance. In the club scene and throughout the film, a variety of Trinidadian musical genres is featured including the familiar sounds of Chutney (Babla and Kanchan), Soca (Machel Montano), and Parang (Baron), among others; and Chutney superstar K.I. makes a cameo. Additionally, in the club scene, one character, Sky (played by Premika Leo), points out the irony of being Caribbean in Western spaces when she tells Dhani we all connect because of our shared music, culture, and heritage, but we also understand the important differences between our cultures. We aren’t all from the same place, we don’t all speak the same way, and we don’t all eat the same food; but looking in from the outside, Canadians assume we are all the same.
Doubles won three awards at the Canadian Film Fest in Toronto in March 2024: the Reel Canadian Indies Award; the People’s Pick for Best Flick; and the Jury Award for Best Supporting Actor, which was awarded to Errol Sitahal. I saw the film on February 10, 2024 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), as part of its annual Caribbean Film Festival. The show was sold out. Artists, academics, activists, community members, BAM members, and others packed the audience. After the screening, filmmaker Alrick Brown spoke with director Ian Harnarine. In their discussion, Harnarine revealed that some aspects of the film were based on his relationship with his own father, a Trinidadian immigrant to Canada who became sick with dementia. At the time, Harnarine was a graduate student in New York City and went home to Toronto regularly to visit. Similarly, in Doubles, shortly after arriving in Canada, Dhani learns that his father is severely ill. Harnarine also mentions that he purposely avoided portraying carnival and scenes in the city of Port of Spain that are commonly highlighted in media and popular culture that center Trinidad; instead the film depicts scenes in rural areas of Trinidad.
As an Indo-Caribbean American, seeing Indo-Caribbean characters on the big screen was incredibly validating. Growing up in a country where people are often confused about who I am and where I come from is exhausting. While more nuanced and complex representations of South Asians in popular media have increased in the last decade, they still often focus on Indians with origins in the subcontinent; the distinct histories and experiences of Indo-Caribbeans remain underrepresented, even in popular culture centered on the Caribbean. The film further complicates South Asian representation by including Sri Lankan characters who work in the restaurant alongside Ragbir.
As a Guyanese American, doubles has become a regular part of my diet. Even though I lived in Trinidad for a few months en route to the U.S, I didn’t start eating it until my family moved to Richmond Hill, Queens, or “Little Guyana.” The plethora of Trinidadian and Guyanese roti shops that line Liberty Avenue, the center of the Indo-Caribbean diasporic community in New York City, all serve the popular Trinidadian snack. This is different from Guyana where Guyanese often prefer cassava ball or egg ball. When the Guyanese Amazon Warriors faced the Trinibago Knight Riders in the 2023 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) cricket final, Guyanese fans proudly held up homemade signs that read “Egg Ball betta than Doubles;” these messages circulated beyond the stadium on social media. Although egg ball is my favorite, doubles is a close second, and second-generation Indo-Caribbeans whose families originate from different parts of the Caribbean may not think of doubles simply as a Trinidadian street food, but as part of their own cultural food heritage. Although eating doubles in New York might not be the same as eating it on the street in Trinidad, and eating egg ball in New York might not be the same as eating it at the market in Guyana, I am fortunate to be able to sit down at a roti shop in Richmond Hill and eat from a plate that has egg ball with mango sour on one side, and doubles with tamarind and kuchela on the other; both cheap, warm, and filling treats that feel like home.
