The 2011 short film "Doubles with Slight Pepper"written and directed by Ian Harnarine, is a massive achievement for storytelling in Caribbean cinema. Set in a rural village in Trinidad, Dhani a young man whom I estimate is in his early twenties, has to sell doubles in front of the local market place to support himself and his mother.
The first line Dhani delivers in the film says so much historically about the east Indian experience in the Caribbean. East Indians were brought here as indentured labourers by the British colonials from the years 1845 to 1917. Dhani is quoted as saying "I am 104th generation "Brahmin" which he quickly dismisses as a lie and follows that with the line "I come from a long line of poor and stupid coolies (a derogatory slang for an east Indians),".
During the indentureship period a significant amount of labourers tried desperately to hide their former lowly statuses from India. They either claimed that they were royalty or from the highest class of Hindus, that being the "Brahmin" caste.
Some of the labourers even adopted the royal Hindu title of "Maharaj" which translated to "King"as their surnames. The fact is that most of the indentured labourers were indeed of a low caste in India and came to the Caribbean to escape poverty, criminal persecution or forcefully evicted from their former lands by the British landlords. Dhani dashes these perpetuated fallacies of royalty and superiority by boldly stating his family's historical lowly status of being migrants to the Caribbean. Unfortunately this is not so different to his current status as he still toils in the street of Trinidad to make ends meets.
Dhani's first customer is "Ragbir" his estranged father and they share a very bitter and dare I say "peppery" exchange of words. In his anger Dhani packs up his doubles stand and rides off. We learn that Ragbir has been absent as a father for many years (since Dhani was a little boy) having migrated to Canada with promises of sending for his wife and young child, which he never does.
In that first meeting Ragbir shows Dhani a t-shirt saying it is for him "all the way from Toronto" this evokes the narrative of the so called "barrel children" of the Caribbean. Ragbir's character represents a host of parents who left their children in the Caribbean to seek a better lives in the USA, Canada, the UK or other European nations. While living abroad parents would often ship barrels addressed to their children's appointed guardians. These barrels would be filled with clothes, food, electronics and other items and would often come to represent the only real connection between child and parent for years sometimes decades.
Ragbir's sudden reappearance into lives of Dhani and his mother "Sumintra" is an attempt to make peace with his family. He signs over the land and the house which they have lived in all their lives and he even shares his expert knowledge of doubles cooking by revealing to Dhani the family's secret ingredient of honey. In one very revealing scene Dhani pushes Ragbir away when he attempts to dance closer to Sumintra. We observe clearly the oedipal complex that has developed from Dhani being the "man of the house" for most of his life.
The deeper truth is that Ragbir is dying from a blood disorder and it is hoped that Dhani would be a match as a donor and save his life. Unfortunately Dhani is not a match and his father will surely die, he is left contemplating this vicious cycle of poverty that he appears to be trapped within. Dhani represents many Caribbean peoples who came here as slaves or indentured labourers, toiled and suffered for generations but never rose above their rank. The Caribbean is marketed as a paradise to tourists but citizens often experience it as poverty stricken traps that has no escape. "Doubles with Slight Pepper" deals with these issues masterfully and to the Caribbean viewer, to use the parlance of Trinbagonians, "it lashes" very deeply.
"Fish" is a simple story told through film that reveals to the audience the very dark and complex issues of crime and poverty in today's Caribbean. The Trinidad born director Shaun Escayg chose to portray the grim reality of modern day Port of Spain in a manner that run counter to the "sun, sand, sea and sex" images that are usually marketed as Trinidad and Tobago to the world.
In his directorial debut Escayg (who has worked on special effects for blockbuster films such as Transformers :Darkside of the Moon) found himself criticized by tourism and government officials in Trinidad and Tobago.
"They said I'm showing the country in not so good of a light and my answer is that I'm speaking for the people who probably don't have the opportunity to speak for themselves," said Escayg in article by the LA Times on July 13, 2012. "Crime and poverty is something we don’t like to talk about in the Caribbean; it’s swept under the rug with talk of parties and beaches. But I wanted to show what for many people is the real world,"continued Escayg in the same article.
The film is set in the Beetham market and off the coast of Sea Lots, two areas of Port of Spain that most Trinbagonians try to avoid or often ignore. The story is centered around two homeless cousins named "Fish" and "Sticky" who engage in petty crimes such as stealing women's handbags. Their main aim to get whatever cash is available so they could eat and in Fish's case to gamble. Fish makes the unfortunate mistake of stealing money belonging to the ominously named gangster "Surgeon" as police were reprimanding his associate "Puppet".
We do not see when Fish and Sticky are caught, instead both men are tied and beaten by Surgeon and Puppet on an off shore platform which gives the audience a shudder of how isolated the Caribbean islands can feel. Though it sports exotic tropical scenery and a mélange of cultures, Port of Spain has also struggled in recent years with violent crime, as drug cartels have used the city as a transit point for their illegal business.The scene has a symbolic sense of being a representation of Trinidad and Tobago or any island in the Caribbean that appears to be paradise but is actually a crime infested trap where the strong take advantage of the weak.
Surgeon is heartless, stoned face and intent on reclaiming the stolen money, in one fell swoop of his sharpened cutlass (machete) he lops off two of Sticky's fingers with ease and precision. Surgeon represents the power and command wielded by gangsters in the modern day Caribbean, he and Puppet are not the "biggest fish" in the game but they larger than the unfortunate cousins and they are willingly to gobble them up to reclaim their territory. Fear and intimidation are hallmarks of the powerful gun and drug lords that operate in Trinidad and Tobago and Surgeon and Puppet strike an all too familiar image of criminals that seem to sprout as hydra (when the law chops one down, two others take their place).
We can identify with the pain and struggle of Sticky and Fish, their poverty led to their desperation and anyone can make a mistake and thereby offend the wrong persons (it a plot reminiscent of Vittorio De Sica's 1948 film "The Bicycle Thief") . Surgeon and Puppet however we would rather reject but if we look closer at their characters we can identify that they also are victims of a corrupted system.
In fact their brutality in recovering what was stolen from them may be to build their reputations and status among the "bigger fishes" in the complex crime world that they exist within. In the Caribbean our public service and justice systems are inefficient and filled with bureaucracy, however our crime world is well equipped, organized and there is a real movement to cut or even chop out the middleman as evidenced by the machete scene.
Escayg film paints a very grim image of the Caribbean and one that the governments and certain media organizations try desperately to cover up. "Fish" holds a mirror up to our modern societies and forces us to face the imbalances, the injustices and the unfortunate acceptance of our criminal elements as normalcy. David Rudder once referred to the Caribbean islands in his song Rally Around the West Indies :
" in these tiny theaters of conflict and confusion,
known as the isles of the West Indies,
we already know who brought us here
and created this confusion,
so I am begging my people please".
In the end, Fish survives while Sticky is violently dragged away to his death, attached to the hull of Surgeon's boat. This is symbolic of being taken away by force from your home on a ship. A narrative of our shared Caribbean history of slavery and indentureship that may never be fully resolved. It is left to Fish to reclaim his lost life and escape this vicious cycle of poverty and crime that has claimed so many lives and destroyed nations. Maybe he can swim out of the dirty waters that surround him and realize that crime doesn't pay and eventually the big fish will always eat the small the fish.
In these tiny theatres of conflict and confusion
Better known as the isles of the West Indies
We already know who brought us here
And who created this confusion
So I'm begging, begging my people please - See more at: http://islandlyrics.com/lyrics-david_rudder-rally_round_the_west_indies.htm#sthash.QKVzbbIF.dpuf
Better known as the isles of the West Indies
We already know who brought us here
And who created this confusion
So I'm begging, begging my people please - See more at: http://islandlyrics.com/lyrics-david_rudder-rally_round_the_west_indies.htm#sthash.QKVzbbIF.dpuf
In these tiny theatres of conflict and confusion
Better known as the isles of the West Indies
We already know who brought us here
And who created this confusion
So I'm begging, begging my people please - See more at: http://islandlyrics.com/lyrics-david_rudder-rally_round_the_west_indies.htm#sthash.QKVzbbIF.dpuf
Better known as the isles of the West Indies
We already know who brought us here
And who created this confusion
So I'm begging, begging my people please - See more at: http://islandlyrics.com/lyrics-david_rudder-rally_round_the_west_indies.htm#sthash.QKVzbbIF.dpuf
