Parbatee Sawh, known as Sarah, prepares doubles and other Indo-Caribbean dishes and began selling rotis, aloo pie and dhal puri from her car before introducing her cuisine to Notting Hill Carnival in the 1990s. Sarah moved from Trinidad to Lewisham in 1972 to work as a nurse and has become a Carnival regular. Her daughters Christina and Leah Bedeau now run the Sweet Hand Cuisine stall while Sarah remains involved. Christina, who has mixed Black-Indian heritage, experienced being hard to place in 1990s London and faced exclusion from different ethnic groups. The family notes that the food is celebrated but the history of Indian indentureship that shaped these dishes often goes unacknowledged.
I started selling rotis, aloo pie, dhal puri just out of my car,
Then in the 90s I started distributing my Indo-Caribbean cuisine to the yearly event.
In London during the 90s, there wasn't really a space for Indo-Caribbeans. People didn't know how to box me, and I'd get frowned upon by different ethnic groups, whereas in Trinidad the diversity is the norm,
People don't always talk about how Indians came to the Caribbean in the first place. There isn't much awareness of indentureship. The dishes get celebrated, but the story behind them does not,
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