After more than a year of searching, and with help from a local radio station, two acclaimed South African filmmakers finally found the person best suited to play the lead role in an upcoming movie that's close to their hearts.
Doctor Kajal Lutchminarain, a Durban-based plastic surgeon, was revealed this week as Amisha, the main character in “The Cane Cutter” feature movie, during Tuesday’s hosting of East Coast Radio’s breakfast show.
When “action” was called during auditions for the role, she transitioned effectively into Amisha.
Shan Moodley, the film’s producer, and Dr Eubulus Timothy, as director, are aiming to deliver a rousing modern day love story with unmistakable roots to the era when Indian indentured labourers settled in South Africa.
While Lutchminarain will make her film debut in the starring role ahead of other hopefuls who had acting experience, the movie’s visionaries saw in her what they were looking for: “strong character and looks”.
Lutchminarain, the 2009 Miss India SA winner and the 2010 Miss India Worldwide queen, said her life’s journey has prepared her adequately to play Amisha.
“I read the script, it’s beautiful and simple.
“Every scene is significant, with wonderful interwoven facts about our history as South African Indians,” she said.
Lutchminarain said the movie will educate viewers about happenings since the arrival of Indentured labourers, but not in an in your face and exhaustive way.
“It’s designed especially for young people to understand our past, people like Ahmed Kathrada and others, and what we’ve been subjected to.
“It is deeply personal,” she said.
In the movie, Amisha falls in love with the leading male, Dev, played by Razeen Dada, and they talk about their respective great grandparents’ struggles.
At some point they realise that his great grandfather and her great grandmother had met, fell in love, but were separated while on a ship carrying indentured labourers to South Africa.
They never saw each other again.
Dev drops out of law school and is making a documentary movie about his great grandfather, much to the displeasure of his high-flying divorced parents who hold strong views on education.
He meets Amisha, a doctor, who was in an abusive relationship. She is slightly older, and of a different caste and religion.
“Will Amisha and Dev make it together or not?” Lutchminarain wondered.
“Right now Amisha’s character is words on a piece of paper. It is my duty to bring her to life,” she said.
Lutchminarain doesn’t believe she is out of her depth playing the leading role.
A good example of Lutchminarain’s resolve was when, in spite of not being a strong swimmer, she completed the 2013 Midmar Mile.
After preparing well, she had a “panic attack” during the swim.
“I said to myself, I need to get out of this,” she said.
But her colleagues, who also swam, egged her on to the finish line.
“It did something to me. It reaffirmed my belief that there’s nothing I can’t do,” she said.
She nursed the idea of a role in an action movie from her high school days. For her light skin and boys gravitating towards her, she received much roasting from school bullies, but she felt empowered after learning Judo. Lutchminarain felt her martial arts skills would be useful in an action flick.
Uncanny for her, is how the movie’s script resonates with so many local Indian families, including her parents.
“My mom (Kamlesh) is Gujarati speaking and my father is Hindi. She’s from Joburg and he’s from Durban.
“There was a huge issue when they got together. It was catastrophic,” she said.
They eloped, got married in secret and they now have two wedding anniversaries.
“One for when they eloped and the other is the official wedding they had afterwards,” she added.
Her father, Anandkumar, is a dentist, her mother is a school teacher and Lutchminarain has two younger siblings (Sheethal and Sohil).
She said she was a culmination of parents; her father the scientist and her artistic mother who is a trained classical dancer.
“My dad mirrors tough love and has a scientist’s mind, while mom was always a dreamer,” she said.
Lutchminarian said members of her family were her inspiration in life.
Her nani (mother’s mother) Leelawathi Roopnarain’s daring got her into a nursing school for whites only, through her light skin and taking on the name “Leela Rian”.
Tharadevi Gopali, her father’s mother (aajee), was about doing what was right and was “always fighting for us”.
“Only she (aajee) could scold my dad, the disciplinarian,” she said.
Lutchminarain’s heart was set on entering medical school after matric but didn’t land a seat at the universities she preferred.
She dumped medicine and enrolled for a course in business science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, but not before standing up to her disapproving father for the first time.
During that year, she joined a local rock band as their lead singer, and they played at various gigs.
Her father suggested she enrol at the Walter Sisulu Medical School in Mthatha the next year and submitted an application on her behalf.
“I was elated to receive the acceptance letter for an interview, even though it was in the middle of nowhere.
“My five years there were life-changing,” she said, adding that she had to wash her own clothes and boil water for bath time.
But she made some lifelong friends there.
In her third year, her mother talked her into entering the Miss India South Africa pageant (2009), which she won.
That qualified her for the Miss India Worldwide pageant in 2010, which was also hosted in Durban, and she won.
“It was significant because of the FIFA World Cup and 150 years anniversary of Indians arriving in South Africa,” she said.
The artist in her was displayed at the pageant in the three-in-one three-minute act she performed for the judges.
She did a ventriloquist piece with the puppet that her mother and her put together, some classical dancing and sang Churillia from a Bollywood movie.
Lutchminarain the ventriloquist also performed for children at many outreach programmes she attended in the rural villages of Mthatha.
Someday she hopes to build an arts centre for children, where they would be free to “dream and explore”.
Her Miss India success opened a door to a Bollywood movie leading role. She had to turn it down after consulting with her university dean.
She believes her life’s journey has prepared her adequately to transition into the role of Amisha.
Director Timothy said Lutchminarain was “strong, had the looks and was someone who could pull off the role.
“She has written poems, done plays and acted before, not at this level, and she came prepared for the role, like Dada had.
“We have been looking and doing auditions for actors for over a year,” he said.
Timothy said ECR’s breakfast show host, Darren Maule also assisted with their search.
“He spoke about it daily and all the details was on the ECR website
Timothy said Moodley was a long-time associate and friend, and they used their own money to fund the small budget movie, which was originally meant to be a documentary.
“The movie is our contribution to South African Indians, with real people telling real stories of us as a people, without distracting from the storyline.
“ We don’t have a memorial after our arrival , there is nothing apart from temples, mosques and churches to say that we are here. In other country’s, the Indian arrival is a public arrival.
“Our kids have no idea of us. This will be the movie they will watch to get an idea of who we are.
“This is a culmination of our life’s work. This is what Schindler's List is to Steven Spielberg,” said Timothy.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE