Question- Write the summary of 'Harvest' by Manjula Padamanabhan.

or
Write an introduction of 'Harvest'.

Answer - 

'Harvest' is a play by Manjula Padmanabhan concerned with organ- selling in India set in the near future, It was first published in 1997 by Kali for women. Harvest won the 1997. Onassis Prize as the best new international play. The play was published by Aurora Metro Books in 2003. It is a critique at the commonditization of the third world body.

'Harvest' is a darkly comic and unsetting tale of globalism and organ harvesting in India. Harvest poses a potent critique about how the "first" world cannibalizes the "third" world to fulfill its own desires. The play is set in the future, at a time when multinational companies have gone to the third world not for software, minerals or fabric, but to harvest organs for their rich customers in America. It's about India and the gritty Third world reality. 'Harvest' is set in 2010 when a destitute nation will be openly preyed upon by the richer superpowers who have amassed everything. Harvest is a futuristic play about the sale of body parts and exploitative relations between developed and developing countries.

The play is an ironic, sci-fi examination of the relations between developing and developed countries. Set in the imminent future, Harvest imagines a grisly pact between the first and third worlds, in which desperate people can sell their body parts to wealthy clients in return for food, water, shelter and riches for themselves and their families. As such, it is a play about how the "first" world cannibalizes the "third" world to fulfill it own desires.

Harvest is a dark, bitter, savagely funny vision of the cannibalistic future that awaits the human race...... a parable of what will happen when the rich denizens [a foreigner allowed certain rights in their adopted country] of the first world begin to devour bits and pieces of the Third world poor. Harvest poses a potent critique about how the "first" world cannibalizes the "third" world to fulfill its own desires.

Its Summary:- The play is set in future, at a time when multinational companies have gone to the Third world not for software, minerals or fabric, but to harvest organs for their rich customers in America. It's about India and the gritty Third world reality. Set in the imminent future, Harvest imagines a grisly pact between the first and third worlds, in which desperate people can sell their body parts to wealthy clients in return for food, water, shelter and riches for themselves and their families.

The play confronts us with a futuristic Bombay of the year 2010. Om Prakash, a jobless Indian, agrees to sell unspecified organs through inter planta services, Inc. (a multinational corporation) to a rich person if first world for a small fortune, inter Planta and the recipients are obsessed with maintaing Om's health and invasively control the lives of Om, his mother, Ma and wife Jaya in their one-room apartment. The recipient, Ginni, periodically looks on them via a videophone and treats them condescendingly. Om's diseased brother Jeetu is taken to give organs instead of Om.

In Harvest, Om, a just laid off bread winner [(of an employer)] To dismiss (workers) from employment e.g. at a time of low business volume,, often with a severance package] for a shuggling India family living in a Cramped Bombay tenement, decides to sell his organs to a shadowy company called interplanta in hopes of reversing his financial plight. Oms family is monitored around the clock, receiving frequent video phone type inquiries and directives from the supposed organ recipient, an icy young blonde named Ginni. Om's mother fails into a stup or, constantly absorbed by programs on the TV provided by interplanta. The family's lives continue to go away. The play may be set in the future, but it reflects contemporary conditons as well, India, one-third the size of the united states, has three times, the population and almost 30 percent of its employable labour force is out of work and the country's biggest problem are overpopulation and inadequate education.

The story, centers on Om who had recently become jobless. Joblessness, desperation, cynicism are the defining national sentiment Om, a just laid off breadwinner for a struggling Indian family living in a cramped Bombay tenement, decides to sell his organs to a shadowy company called interplanta in hopes of reversing his financial plight. The family portrait is an archetypal picture of dissolution and decay. It is into this world of disorder that interplanta services brings apparent order and respectability when Om signs up to be an organ donor for an American woman named Ginni because there are no other jobs available for in Mumbai. As the family's life becomes more comfortable, their relationships become more strained than they ever were in their poverty and eventually the whole family is at risk of losing not only bady parts but their souls and identities as well. The corporation, personified as three anonymous, marked guards dressed all in white, gradually takes over every aspect of their lives.

Guards arrive to make his home into a germ-free zone. Om's family is monitored around the clock, receiving frequent video phone-type inquiries and directives from the supposed organ recipient, an icy young blonde named Ginni. Ginni pays him to lead a "clean" and "healthy" life so she can harvest healthy organs whenever she needs them. Ginni begins to control every aspect of Om's life, from when and what he clears to whom he sees and how he uses the pathroom. In fact, Ginni comes to control the entire family until the end of the play.

There occurs a radical change to their dingel room and it acquires an air of sophistication. The most important installation however, is the contact module placed at the centre of the room to facilitate communication between the receiver and the donor. The contact module and the apparent order brought in by Inter Planta seem to create turmoil in personal relationships. The donor and his family is kept under the constant gaze of the receiver as a module can rotate round to face each corner and can flicker to life at any- moment. Ginny compares Om's flat to a "human goldfish bowl" (Harvest 43) which she can observe and amuse herself with. The concept of the design is to allow a watchman to observe (opticon) all (pan) inmates of an institution without their being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. Thus the inmates of the third world are trapped under the unrelenting gaze of the first world. This total deprivation of privacy can be interpreted as the ultimate form of surveillance.

Om's diseased brother, Jeetu, is taken to give organs instead of Om, and the recipient, Ginni turns out to not be what she intially seemed. In a final act of defiance, the seeds of rebellion flower in a "checkmate" poly by Om's wife Jaya.

Om's younger brother has abondoned the family homestead [The dwelling house and its adjoining land] and earns his upkeep as a bi-sexual sex worker. Om's mother has been prayed [of a person's nerves of temper) showing the effects of strain] by years of want and penniless living. So much so, she sees nothing amiss with her sun's trade-off. As long as she gets her long- desired television set, her fridge her microwave and all the other things that money can buy.

Om, on his part, is too smitten by the beautiful blonde his buyer from across the seven seas that keeps staring down at him from the television screen and driver him queasy [sick/unsettled] with her tantalizingly delivered sermons.

When Jeetu, his brother returns unexpectedly, he is taken as the donor. Om can't accept this. He leaves to get back his position as the donor. Jaya, his wife is left alone. She was seduced into selling her body parts, for use by the rich westerners. Jaya, the sensitive young wife seems to have some how managed to retain her not for sale soul despite the overarching gloom.

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