Badru Deens’ book was published eleven years ago in 2013 and ever since he’s been logging it around, promoting it as any marketing genius would have advised him to do so in the spirit of advertising as a means of making your book a literary Coca Cola.
Even though ‘Doubles’ has made its mark on the local gastronomical smorgasbord, and for a century it has been a street food for citizens on the run needing a cheap quick fix for sustenance, it must be stated that until Deen’s book, it remained something of a local fast food. However, the book coupled with its internecine controversies was responsible for doubles transitioning from just a curried response to KFC to a rival cuisine. Cheaper than Colonel sanders offering and in some ways more palatable to the taste buds of locals who are bred on curry-flavoured meals, doubles became an industry that had the potential to break barriers in the food business.
Credit must be given to Deen for seeing this and that via his book, doubles is making inroads in the international market and the very fact that the NY Times has done an exclusive on it, gives the impression that this is more than just a toehold for the product.
Couple weeks ago, Deen came down from the US to receive his Naipaul Award for Indo-Trini excellence and vicariously one wonders whether the Award had anything to do with the NY Times recognizing Deen’s book as it is a fact that a word hinted about literary things falling on the right ear could resonate that high up.
This is said simply because in the past eleven years, the book has been marketed zealously by the writer and its only after its name got associated with the great Naipaul name that it made this leap from just a book to something literary. If I am pinching credit here, it is because I see the Naipaul Award as something we should be proud of and which should be celebrated.
I chide those who were recognised and did not make it a point to collect their medals and know if you did you might have attained the literary transcendence of Deen who might just be one of the few Trinis who made it to the Times.
Thus, in the spirit of his success and my vision, another Award for Indian Arrival Day is in the assembly line and more deserving recipients are being recognised .
L. Siddhartha Orie.
