BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

 The in­do-Trinida­di­an ul­ti­mate street food called dou­bles is more than just the "lick-your-fin­ger" type of com­mon bite.

In fact, be­tween its two baras, more than its cur­ried chan­na, kuchela and sweet sauce, lies the his­to­ry, strug­gles and the tri­umphs of the Deen fam­i­ly from Princes Town, who ar­rived in T&T dur­ing the in­den­ture­ship pe­ri­od in 1845.

In the book ti­tled Out of the Dou­bles Kitchen, cur­rent­ly a five-star rat­ed piece of lit­er­ary on Ama­zon.com, one would dis­cov­er the sac­ri­fices made by Emamool "Mamood­een" Deen, the pa­tri­arch who be­gan sell­ing fried chan­na in cone-shaped pa­per to cre­ate added in­come to sup­port his wife, nine chil­dren and a 'love child.'

 The book, pub­lished in No­vem­ber 12, 2013, is not about how to make dou­bles per se, but rather to show­case a slice of the In­di­ans his­to­ry in T&T, said its au­thor and sev­enth child to the Deens, Badru Deen.

 In a phone in­ter­view, Deen, 73, who cur­rent­ly lives in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, said the ref­er­ence to the word dou­bles in the ti­tle of the book is re­al­ly used to show­case the post in­den­ture­ship pe­ri­od in T&T and the var­i­ous ways the In­di­ans found to free them­selves from the prison of pover­ty and the op­pres­sive sys­tem of colo­nial­ism.

The un­guard­ed sto­ries ex­pose the Deens vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and re­al­ness in deal­ing with the "fam­i­ly mem­bers of pover­ty"—il­lit­er­a­cy, al­co­holism, do­mes­tic abuse, shame, race, and class.

 There is a mar­riage of con­flict, the will to sur­vive and to thrive de­spite ad­ver­si­ty, and the hap­py-end­ing which cel­e­brates up­ward mo­bil­i­ty by a new gen­er­a­tion, which is ev­i­dent through the many per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al ac­com­plish­ments of Deen, who grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba, Cana­da, with a BA in Eco­nom­ics and So­ci­ol­o­gy and a B Comm(Hons) in Mar­ket­ing and Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion. 

He al­so held no­table po­si­tions in the fi­nan­cial and mar­ket­ing sec­tors, fi­nal­ly start­ing his own cor­po­ra­tion, which he still leads to­day.

Al­though Emamool "Mamood­een" Deen was paid just 25 cents a day, which was nowhere enough to ad­e­quate­ly sup­port his grow­ing fam­i­ly, he was prob­a­bly con­sid­ered elite among the rest as he was one of the few cho­sen to per­form do­mes­tic du­ties for the colo­nial mas­ter and al­so held the po­si­tion of su­per­vi­sor on the sug­ar es­tate.

 In 1936, Emamool and his wife, Ra­su­lan, be­gan ex­per­i­ment­ing with what would be­come their new form of in­come out of his fa­ther-in-law's home, a di­lap­i­dat­ed bar­rack-styled hut, sit­u­at­ed at Bo­nan­za Street, Princes Town. On out­door fires, they made their first ma­jor sell of the sim­ple grain chan­na.

 "They de­cid­ed to buy some chan­na, salt, pep­per and pa­per and wrap fried chan­na in cone-shaped packs with the plan of 25 packs at one cent each," says Deen.

 Emamool was con­vinced if he could sell more than 25 packs of his fried chan­na treat, he would ex­ceed his "hand-to-mouth" dai­ly pay.

His courage of con­vic­tion worked and in no time he was mak­ing more mon­ey sell­ing his fried chan­na than he made on the es­tate. Want­i­ng to see his sim­ple culi­nary gift evolve, Emamool be­gan to make and sell dif­fer­ent ver­sions of chan­na to eat. Cus­tomers were en­joy­ing not on­ly the fried norm but now they could ask for boiled or cur­ried chan­na served hot on pa­per.

 Deen said bara ex­ist­ed be­fore dou­bles ever came about and were com­mon­ly served with the chut­ney of day, as an In­di­an del­i­ca­cy which the more es­tab­lished could en­joy.

 Ex­per­i­ment­ing fur­ther, Emamool de­cid­ed to place the cur­ry chan­na on a sin­gle bara and sell it to cus­tomers who en­joyed it so much, they be­gan ask­ing him to "dou­ble up" on the bara, soon cre­at­ing the first-ever dou­bles, as it is known to­day.

 With busi­ness now boom­ing, mak­ing up to 200 coins at var­i­ous in­stances—mon­ey they had nev­er seen—Deen said it was his fa­ther’s vi­sion to place his six sons in the busi­ness to make it a dou­bles em­pire.

 He up­grad­ed—mov­ing from Bo­nan­za Street to Fair­field, Princes Town. In his quest to ex­pand the busi­ness Emamool brought his two broth­ers-in-law—the Alis—in­to the busi­ness. The Alis even­tu­al­ly branched off on their own and be­came the pop­u­lar Ali’s dou­bles as is known to­day.

Deen ex­plained that af­ter the death of his twin broth­ers who passed away one year apart of each oth­er in 1956 and 1957, his fa­ther made yet an­oth­er move, aban­don­ing Princes Town and re­lo­cat­ing to San Juan, but lost ground and the Alis took over.

 He cred­its his un­cle As­gar Ali and his two sons for re­al­ly push­ing dou­bles to gain na­tion­al at­ten­tion and be­com­ing the biggest sell­ers of dou­bles in the coun­try at the time.

 To­day, his younger broth­er Shamaloo Deen main­tains the last out­let of the Deen’s Dou­bles in T&T at the fam­i­ly’s old busi­ness on San­ta Cruz Old Road. For­mer­ly, he had in­tro­duced the fam­i­ly’s orig­i­nal dou­bles in Cana­da where he gained much suc­cess, but af­ter a di­vorce, he closed up shop and re­turned to T&T.

The Trav­el Chan­nel fea­tured the ori­gin of dou­bles on lo­ca­tion at San­ta Cruz Old Road to com­mem­o­rate Emamool's 100th birth­day on Jan­u­ary 20, 2017. Dean was al­so in­ter­viewed by Ne­ki Mo­han of ABC tele­vi­sion.

Out of the Dou­bles Kitchen is list­ed in the li­brary of all three UWI cam­pus­es in the Re­gion—Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and St Au­gus­tine, Trinidad. Deen said he plans on leav­ing the man­u­script in safe­keep­ing at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.