Part 54
Just to wrap up the story of this segment of my life, I became more and more involved with the Indian community in Durban through the Bughwan family. So much so that Bobby Maharaj, Devi’s brother-in-law, who was a marvellous character and a keen tennis player, asked me to come and play a game of tennis with him.
We travelled a few miles to the north of Durban where Bobby was a member of the non-white Avoca Tennis Club. Once again, I was treading on Apartheid’s toes by having the audacity to play tennis with an Indian!!!
We were evenly matched, and Bobby asked me if I would like to play league tennis for the club. So, I took another step on the road to gently irritate the authorities. After becoming a regular member of the team, some wise guy actually entered my name for the Natal Province Non-White tennis championships. I figured that it was a step too far, not only for me but for the club which could easily be closed down if the government felt that they were becoming a danger to their master plan of separateness. Bobby agreed and I was withdrawn from the championships.
This did not stop me from socializing with this wonderful community. I would regularly join either Dennis and Devi for a meal or Bobby and his wife Kay for an afternoon at their home. Bobby’s young son, aged about 6, asked for my name and managed to “Indianize” it from Chris Dresser to Kiss Desai which amused the family enormously.
Dennis and I became close friends. He was aware of my frustration over a lack of opportunities in the South African movie industry. Television was also ten years away. One day he suggested that we make a short film together. He would finance it, but I would have to earn my keep by doing some job that would allow me time to do the filming. Dennis wanted to try his hand at cinematography. As a world-class portrait photographer, he clearly had the basic skills of lighting, composition, and so on. I felt that I could give him the basics of camera movement. It was, in fact, my directorial debut other than one very simple film commercial I had directed for Alpha Films before becoming a scriptwriter with them.
I saw it as great opportunity to make the transition from production and writing and on to directing. I jumped at the chance and wrote a very simple little “feel good” story entitled “20 Cents by Friday.” I cast two of Dennis’ children, Kamal and Veena as the stars of the movie. They were around 8 or 9 years old at the time, Later Kamal was to become the Head of the X-ray Department in some major hospital in the US and Veena went on to become a Barrister in England. However, for the purpose of the movie they were very photogenic young kids.
Meanwhile, I had to find a job. I successfully applied to a small taxi company to become a night-time driver, leaving me free to film during the day. There was a test of my knowledge of Durban that I had to pass before the municipality gave me a permit to become a taxi driver. It was, in fact, a very simple test. By sheer luck they asked me to name a road that had the name of an outlying suburb but was in fact in the middle of the city. I happened to know the street, so I passed the test.
Taxi driving in Durban in 1963 ranged from the scary to the farcical. On my first night, I had to pick up an American sailor from a brothel. The vehicle I was given was a 1956 Plymouth, with a diesel engine fitted into it by the company for fuel efficiency. Unfortunately, it also lacked power. The brothel was situated in the hills above the city. I managed to get to the establishment to find a very drunk ship’s engineer, who had had such a great time that he insisted that I take him to another brothel. I radioed base for help and was given instructions. This took me down a steep road with an equally steep hill on the other side. The poor old Plymouth simply couldn’t make it up the other side. The engineer’s happiness turned to fury as we were stuck in a dip with no way out. As he sobered up, he realized that I had a real problem, and his engineering skills took over. He tinkered with the engine but to no avail. Finally, he hit upon the solution and told me to drive up the hill in reverse, saying that reverse gear was stronger than the other gears. He was right, so my first night as a taxi driver revealed that I was backward all around! The man was finally so amused by the whole thing that he told me rather to take him back to his ship.
I soon discovered that the majority of my customers were men wanting to be transported to and from brothels. I quickly had to learn where girls of all colors were situated, ranging from pure white to pure black with various shades in between. It was fascinating and ironic to observe that white South Africans, often Afrikaners would prefer to visit the black girls. Forbidden fruit, I guess!
I also had fun with the police. Another of the insane Apartheid laws was that a white taxi could not carry people of color. However, African American sailors were US citizens regardless of color. I took great delight in transporting African Americans from the docks whenever I could. I was twice pulled up by the cops, who angrily asked why I was carrying non-whites to which I replied, “These gentlemen are US citizens. No law against that is there?” They would grumble but move away and leave me to continue our journey.
I also had a lot of drunks ordering my cab. One guy was so drunk that I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, so he didn’t know where he wanted to go. After driving around for a while, hoping he would spot a familiar place, I smelled burning. He had taken out the ashtray in the middle of the back seat, then started lighting matches and threw them into the hole. The upholstery caught fire and my seat got hotter and hotter until I pulled into a garage, found a hose pipe and pumped water onto the seat. I then drove the guy to the nearest police station and left him with the police.
Another time, the cops called and said that they had a very drunk man at the police station who was well known to them. He was a wealthy farmer who would come into the city once a month to party. Would I take him to the Royal, one of the best Hotels in Durban, where they had booked a room for him. They warned me not to listen if he wanted to have a drink along the way. I managed to get him to the Royal and went on ahead to check that the room was booked. Meanwhile my fare had disappeared. I found a basement bar nearby where he was knocking back brandies. He was a small guy. With a waiter’s help, I lifted him up and carried him up the stairs, with his feet frantically trying to touch the ground like a character in the cartoons. When I got him to the hotel reception desk, they took one look and said there was a mistake, there was no booking. I tried about fifteen other hotels with the same result. The guy had thrust a huge wad of money into my hands and told me to pay anyone who would take him. The moment they saw this drunk they said they were fully booked. I was getting desperate and finally found a seedy backstreet hotel, where the man at reception reluctantly agreed to take him for a fee. I peeled off £20 but now I had to take him to his room on the fifth floor. We nearly made it without incident until a pretty girl who was standing in the corridor caught his eye. As we passed her, he reached out and pinched her butt. After she had stopped yelling at him, I passed another £20 over to her and finally got him to his room. I took another £20 from his roll – there was plenty left – then stuffed the rest of his money into his jacket. I pushed him down on the bed and said, “Stay there!” before fleeing back to my cab!
On the scary side, groups of Africans would sometimes appear silently at the taxi base and take a cab around to one of the many gambling games held across the city in the middle of the night. The deal was that they would duck down if cops appeared. We did not speak or question them, and finding the game they wanted to play often took us to about ten different places before they decided. One of them would then hand me £100 for the ride. Scary but very profitable.
By the way, I also got the movie made…but that’s another story.
Suffice it to say, looking back on my adventures as a young man, they were quite often bizarre, but I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything. Now, older, hopefully wiser, the kind of adventure I really look forward to today is the prospect of the launch of ExoBrain, which could well be the greatest adventure of all, not only for me but all mankind as we journey further into the 21st Century.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.