18 Trading the Human Body: Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest

Dr. Saurabhi Sarmah

About the author:

Manjula Padmanabhan is one of the contemporary Indian playwrights who writes in English. Born in 1953, she is a Delhi based writer and artist who has written a number of plays, novels and short stories. She is a cartoonist as well. Lights Out and Harvest are her two important contributions to the world of contemporary Indian English drama. Lights Out deal with the issue of sexual violence against women in India, and it is based on a real story that took place in Santra Cruz, Mumbai. Harvest is a play that deals with the issue of organ selling in India which we will discuss in detail in this module. Her fame as a playwright rests on Harvest where she uses the tools and technology of the modern world to reflect upon the contemporary realities.

Padmanabhan has also written a collection of monologues called Hidden Fires (2003) where she deals with the various forms of violence and disorder that have engulfed our society. Her Kleptomania is a collection of brilliant and insightful short stories representing the ethos of urban India. Apart from writing plays and monologues, she is a proficient cartoonist. Padmanabhan has been awarded with Onassis Award for Theatre for her play Harvest. Her other writing include Hot Death which is a collection of short stories; Getting There, a travel-memoir; and This is Suki, a collection of her New Delhi strip SUKI. Her comic strips appeared weekly in the Sunday Observer (Mumbai 1982-86) and in the Pioneer (1991-97, New Delhi). She has illustrated twenty- four books for children including her own two novels for children, Mouse Attack and Mouse Invaders. Double Talk is her collection of comic strips dealing with the central character Suki. Also, Padmanabhan contributes as an illustrator both independently and in collaboration. Independently she produces, “I am different! Can you find me? (2011), Unprincess (2005), A Visit to City Market (1986) etc.

About the play:

Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest is based on the existing issue of organ trade in India. Set in Mumbai in 2010, the play takes us to the tensed apartment of a poor family in Mumbai. It deals with stories of Om – the chief protagonist of the play and his family members. The entire family goes through a serious economic problem once Om is dismissed from his clerical job. In a cramped one room apartment, the whole family resides including Om Prakash, the tense and jobless clerk; his wife Jaya, who has accepted the tense life of privation and insecurity; Om’s old mother, the frustrated and self-centred lady, and his younger brother Jeetu who works secretly as a gigolo.

Harvest projects the picture of a family which is surrounded by conflict and mess. Within the family, Om and Jaya are maintaining an unstable marital relationship; in actuality Jaya is carrying on a secret affair with her brother-in-law Jeetu. In Om’s mother, we see a selfish woman whose love only extends only to the eldest son Om, because he is the bread-winner. She is also jealous of her Daughter-in-law Jaya. All these four characters are locked in a loveless and artificial bonding, turning their world into a claustrophobic one within the four walls of a one-room apartment. Thus, amidst economic setback and emotional deprivation, Om takes the lead to find out a solution. To sustain his family, Om decides to sell his organ to an international multinational company in return of a limited amount of money. Om is hired by the multinational company called InterPlanta to donate his healthy organs to a well to do receiver belonging to the West.

Harvest is known as a futuristic play with its extended vision to 2010 that represents the confinement of an middle class family of the third world to the tempting but illegal global economy of the first world. It is a play about an Indian family whose family members are ready to sell their body organs to the organ buyer based in US. Harvest shows the futuristic picture of the modern times when machines will replace human beings.

Harvesting and trading of the Body.

In Harvest, Padmanbhan draws attention the prevailing trend of organ selling in India by representing a poor family whose members take recourse to organ selling to survive and overcome poverty. Harvest, the word refers to the process of collecting or gathering crops. In this context, the title “Harvest” seems to be apt as the play deals with the issue of buying and gathering human organs in India by certain groups who sell these organs in India and abroad. In the play, the members of Om household fall victim of this flesh market in India which is mostly controlled by the West.

However, Harvest is not only about human organ trade and how it affects the poor, it is also about the overriding presence of technology that intervenes in the human world and governs it finally. The play represents the battle between man and machine for the possession of human beings, and how the financially strong groups and agents take advantage of the modern electronic technology to control the financially weak sections of our society.

In the play, Padmanbhan draws our attention to one of the most important truths of life that our economic condition determines the course of our life. It is poverty and joblessness that push the Om household towards this horrible trade. The play begins with Ma and Jaya waiting for Om’s return from his daily job hunting. Both are concerned about Om getting a job because otherwise they will not be able to survive. Om loses his previous job because of his lack of expertise in computer skills. Thus, Padmanahban brings into discussion the influence of technology in the lives of poor people like Om who are unskilled in computerization and technology. Simultaneously, the same technology has been used to fool people like Om to sell their organs. The description of the selection procedure for Om’s new job bears witness to the fact that how technology has been used to deceive the poor people by the multinational organ buyers:

Om: I don’t know for how long we moved. Then there was a door. Inside it was dark like being in heaven! So cool so fresh! I too fainted then with pleasure, I don’t know. I wake up to find how the ground is moving under me.

Ma: what? How is that?

Om: I don’t know. But the floor is moving. Then there’s a sign. REMOVE CLOTHING

Ma: Naked!

Om: So we do that. Still moving. Then each man gets a bag. To put the clothes inside. (219)

Jaya: But why?

Om: Then a sort of rain burst. I wonder if I am dreaming! The water is hot scented. Then cold. Then hot air. Then again the water. It stings a little; this second water smells like some medicine. Then air again. Then we pass through another place. — I don’t know what is happening. Ahead of me a man screams and cries but we are in separate little cages now, can’t move. At one place, something comes to cover the eyes. There’s no time to think, just do. Put your arm here, get one prick, put your arm there, get another. Prick-pissshhh! Pissshhh! Here, stand here, take your head this side, look at a light that side. On and on. Finally, at the end, there’s another tunnel with pretty pictures and some music. And the sign comes, RESUME CLOTHING. I just do what I have to do. All the time, the ground keeps moving. Then at the end, the ground stops we are back on our feet, there are steps. It must be the other side of the building. And as we come down, guards are standing there, waiting for us. And to me they say ‘you, come – ‘and that was it!

Ma: I can’t believe this –

Jaya: Are they mad?

Om: Some other men were also with me, all looking like me, I suppose blank. They told us we had been selected. They wrote down our names, addresses…and… this-that. All details. Then they gave us these packets. Told us not to open they and we must go home, the guards would come with us for final instruction. (2001: 220 -01)

Om gets selected for his new job where he has to play the role of an organ donor. Thus, the beginning introduces to the reader a dark world of institutionalised organ trade which is very much open in the third world countries. It is mainly operate from the countries which used to be the colonies of the Western world. As said by Oliver Decker, organ trade has now become a worldwide business in which not only the sellers and buyers of organs but also a middlemen, hospitals, and physicians are also involved. Here he cites Turner’s observation here according to whom in contrast to most nations’ marketing treatments to international patients; the Philippines differentiates itself by selling all-inclusive kidney transplant packages. The patients from other countries travel to Philippines and receive kidneys purchased from poor individuals (2014: 32). Thus, the commodification of the human body has become obvious and gradually started to acquire a legitimate status in the name of erasing poverty.

In Harvest, Padmanabhan deals with this commoditization of the healthy third world body with the help of significant advances in transplant medicine. Thus, the third world becomes a storehouse of healthy human bodies, a bank of spare parts for ailing bodies in the first world. The wealthy yet ailing patients in the first world are increasingly turning to healthy yet poverty stricken populations of the third world in order to produce spare body parts which is nothing but another means of exploiting the third world encouraged by global capitalism.

These third world bodies are easily available and readymade products that can be sold and bought easily; they do not require any extra effort or labour to be produced. The poor section of the Indian society willingly sells their organs to the opulent receivers to get rid of poverty. It is like making money by selling organs; the money which they will not be able to earn at the cost of their labour and expertise. In their essay on “Millennium capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming”, Comaroff and Comaroff define it as a kind of capitalism that presents itself as a gospel of salvation; a capitalism that, if rightly harnessed, is invested with the capacity wholly to transform the universe of the marginalised and disempowered. (2001: 2).The key understanding of millennial capitalism lies in the particular brand of seduction upon which it operates. This seductiveness is what makes this organ trade possible making third world individuals see their bodies as something which contain natural spare parts that are in high demand, and they end up selling these spare parts such as kidney or cornea to solve their monetary problems.

Thus, Harvest shows that human organ is a precious commodity that is not produced by a labouring human body, but rather extracted from it. It is a commodity because it has a use value. The body is mined for its organs and finally harvested.

Organ trade has become an open and institutionalised trade in India where the donors constitute the third world population while the receivers are from the first world countries. In Harvest, the three Indian donors belong to the same household: Om; his wife Jaya and his younger brother, Jeetu. Padmanabhan creates these characters to interrogate to the particular circumstances that compel people like them to sell their body parts.

Having passed the medical tests at Interplanta, Om has been considered as an eligible and healthy candidate for selling the rights to his entire body to an anonymous buyer in the United States. In his selection interview, Om has lied about his family saying that he is unmarried. But the receiver’s party is smart enough to detect his lie and eventually, they target the entire family including his brother Jeetu and wife Jaya.

A complex feeling of hope and despair becomes apparent in Om’s face after signing the contract. Initially, he is very excited to get the new job which offers him an unexpected financial support:

Om: We’ll have more money than you and I have names for!’ he says to Ma, proudly. ‘Who’d believe there’s so much money in the world?’.

He even goes to defy Jaya’s interventions in this matter and says: ‘You think I did it lightly. But … we’ll be rich! Very rich! Insanely rich! But you’d rather live in this one small room, I suppose! Think it’s such a fine thing – living day in, day out, like monkeys in a hot-case – lulled to sleep by our neighbours’ rhythmic farting! … And starving.

But the actual situation which compels him to sign the contract becomes clear when he says to Jaya:

Om: I went because I lost my job at the company. And why did I lose it? Because I am a clerk and nobody needs clerks anymore! There are no new jobs now – there’s nothing left for people like us! Don’t you know that?

Jaya: You’re wrong, there are choices – there must be choices –

Om: Huh! I didn’t choose. I stood in queue and was chosen! And if not this queue, there would have been other queues – it’s all just a matter of fate, in the end We see that Om decision of signing the contract has been mainly pushed by the thought of improving his family’s economic condition. To do so, he has put blind eyes to the actual reality. When he becomes aware of the consequences of his decision, he is horrified: ‘How could I have done this to myself? What sort of fool am I?’

 Here again Padmanabhan shows the amount of seduction associated with this trade that provides a quasi-magical means of making money and surfaces the actual reality. For example, initially Om’s mother does not know anything about what Om is going to do in his new job. But when she begins to get the hints as to what Om’s new job involves, she is not bothered about to care for it, provided she has all the amenities and faculties at home. She says: “Well, so long as they don’t hurt you… .

As the narrative progresses, we find that Ma has become accustomed to her luxurious life with an array of gadgets provided by the receiver Ginny in order to keep the donor’s family happy. Her life is now completely governed by technology. This unexpected reversal of fortune and the sudden outpouring of comfort and luxury make her blind to the actual realities.

Not only Om has sold his body to Ginny, but he has also sold his and his whole family’s freedom to Ginny. Now, Ginny can observe what the family members do at home. The receiver’s party has installed a contact module through which Ginny can observe the activities of the donor’s family. Here Ginni is controlling the whole family without being physically present at the venue. She enforces her power on the Om household through technology enabled surveillance. It is an echo of what Jeremy Bentham calls panoptic power. The underlying principle of panopticon is the total and constant surveillance of inmates, patients, workers, and general people by controlling them mentally. According to Bentham, it is a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind. It is a power that controls you mentally without using any physical force; but it is the body that is at stake in this functioning of power. By using this mechanism of panopticon, surveillance can be exercised in such a way that those who are being supervised cannot tell whether they are being supervised or not (in Foucault 2006: 73-76). The mechanism of power can be applied to any sphere where some kind of regulation is required and it can be applied via tools like closed circuit television cameras. It is the disciplinary power, a power that operates without actually controlling by another person.

In the play, Ginny does not appear on stage. But she is like the omnipresent GOD, regulating and governing the world of the donors. Ginny does it purely from the perspective of her own profit, because she wants their organs to be healthy so that when she uses them she is not in trouble. For example, when she comes to know that Om family shares a single toilet with another forty people, she can’t accept it and immediately orders the Interplanta services to install a separate toilet at Om’s house. Thus, establishing a permanent module of surveillance at the donor’s place, Ginny tracks each and every move of the residents. Out of fear and obligation, Om urges his family members to police their own behaviour.

The picture of human trade becomes very clear when Ginny says to Om: “I get to give you things you would never get in your lifetime, and you get to give me, well…may be my life” (2001:230). Here Ginny’s speech reveals the inequality involved in this business. She provides materialist things but in return she receives a life. It is an investment she has made to get back her life. Ginny wants Om to be happy and smile because then only his body will remain healthy and so also the organs. It is like harvesting a particular body part from the whole body; or from the land. Like the crop extracted from the land which is a commodity, Om’s organ has also become a commodity with real user value, a profitable part. Like the way we take care of the land to have a better harvest, Ginny also takes care of Om’s body, the fertile land producing that most crucial harvest.

Thus, all the members of Om’s family fall prey to Ginny’s plan, except for Jaya. Only she realises the price that Om is going to pay in return of this luxury. She opposes his move and the tactics of deception. But Om does not listen to Jaya. Finally, it is not Om but his ailing brother Jeetu falls prey to Ginni’s tarp. When the guard comes to receive the donor, Om was away and Jeetu was easily available. Despite, Jaya’s interference saying that he is not the donor and Jeetu’s appeal that he is not the donor, the guards take him away. When Jeetu comes back escorted by the guards, his eyes are no more and the guard informs them that the transplant has been a tremendous success and hence the donor’s family will receive every benefit and consideration due to them under the terms of the contract. Once the organ is extracted, the body of the donor becomes very useless; for the receiver it becomes disposable bodies, of no use. And Jeetu is the first victim of this horrible trade. Harvest not only represents the presence of organ trade in India, but also represents how it affects the physical and mental health of the poor donors; how the poor section of our society has become a pawn in the game played by global capitalism.

The inequality between the rich and poor upon which the organ trade is based, and also the violence associated with this trade come to limelight when Jeetu says: “A rich woman who plucks a poor man’s eyes out of his body

– huh! That’s not a woman; it’s a demon” (2001: 239). The guards from Interplanta services come for the second time to take Jeetu to cut off his other body parts which Jeetu happily accepts because by now he finds himself in a situation which is beyond death and worse than death.

In the final scene, we find another American receiver Virgil who comes to prey upon Jaya’s body. But Jaya straight away refuses to negotiate with his absurd demands. Virgil wants her to give birth to a baby because according to him, they have lost the art of having children. He wants Jaya to do it without making any physical contact with her:

Virgil: “The guards will make the child possible Zhaya. It’s just a formality, a device –

Jaya: Device?

Virgil: You Know, an implant. Something I sent which they are ready to deliver. And you can take your time.

About three days are still within your fertile circle –

But, Jaya wants him to meet her in reality. She has put her own conditions to Virgil which he does not accept; instead he sends his interplanta employees to break down Jaya’s door and implant the device in her so that Jaya becomes pregnant without having any real human intercourse. However, Jaya has adopted a different means of fighting against them. She decides to win by losing and moves on to welcome her death. She warns their advance by holding a knife against her throat. And the play ends at this unresolved juncture.

Thus, in Harvest, Padmanabhan shows that the exploitation of the third world population by the first world is still dominant, but in different guises. And organ trade is one among them. The organ markets run by the first world is taking advantage of the poverty stricken third world people who do not have anything else but to sell their body parts. Harvest demonstrates that this modern trade of selling human body parts can be understood in terms of the existing gross material inequalities between the first and third worlds. Amidst such inequalities and abuse of power by the rich and powerful West, there are a section of people like Jaya who despite being poor do not succumb to this lure of money and wants to hold to their dignity.

The play ends with a question mark. How far this exploitation by the rich of the poor acceptable? Is embracing death can be a solution to this problem against the poor section of humanity? Thus, the audience is left with so many unanswered questions to contemplate on.

In Harvest, Padmanabhan portrays the picture of a dystopian world. A dystopian world is just opposite of what we call a utopian world. A utopian world possesses equality in all spheres of life unlike a dystopian world that does not encourage equality. It is a world full of inequalities and differences between people. Harvest projects the picture of a world which is completely dystopian where the rich section uses and abuses the poor to fulfil their own interest; where the poor people sells their organs for a bargain of few pennies to lead a slightly better life. It is the picture of a cannibalistic future that we find represented in Harvest. Along with organ trade, the play also deals with the overriding presence of poverty in the third world countries – a social problem that has an overriding presence in India. The play also brings into discussion how poverty can limit the moral options of people, and degrade human values and lives. Harvest is a well thought-out critique of the organ trade and global capitalism that lead to the commoditization of the third world body.

Reference

• Padmanabhan, Manjula. Harvest in Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology. Ed. Helen Gilbert, London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
• Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. Ed. Milennial Capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. US: Duke University Press, 2001. Print.
• Decker, Oliver. Commodified Bodies: Organ Transplantation and the Organ Trade. Translated by Steven Rendall. New York: Routledge, 2014.
• http://www.swarthmore.edu/department-theater/manjula-padmanabhan.
• http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/book-review-manjula-padmanabhan- harvest/1/264026.html.
• http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_41208_en.pdf.
• http://studymore.org.uk/ybenfou.htm.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon.
• Foucault, Michel Psychiatric Power. Ed. by Jacques Lagrange. Trans. by Graham Burchell. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillans, 2006. Print.
• http://jaiarjun.blogspot.in/2005/05/double-talk-more-indian-comics-please.html.