Harvest
I saw Manjula Padmanabhan’s play Harvest at Lamama etc, today.
The play centers around the lives of a family of four in Bombay, Om, Jaya, Jeetu and Ma.
It deals with organ donations, and the relationship between the donors and the receivers. It reflects the relationship between people living in the rich first world, and their interactions with families living in the poor, third world.
Om supports his family of three- his intelligent wife Jaya, his wild brother Jeetu and his sarcastic mother, Ma. With no jobs available, he has volunteered to became an organ donor. This leads to a lot of changes in the household. The multi national company Interplanta will takeover their lives and monitor all aspects of it. They bring in new furniture, a TV, a water fountain, and different colored pills to serve as substitutes for food.
The donor Ginni, soon appears in their household, through a monitor, and attempts to communicate with the receiver family. This section portrays the stark differences between their lives. For instance when Jaya sneezes, Ginni fears that it might contaminate Om. The dialogue is very receiver centered, she is imbued with all the power in the conversation, she starts it, asks the questions and then hangs up. The donor family are recipients of her money through Interplanta, so are afraid to express what they actually feel. The family is slowly being bought out. For instance the grandmothers ordered a contraption, her cinema paradiso, which comes equipped with food, water, and unlimited tv channels. She prefers watching tv, then participating in the disintegration of her family.
The play used visual media by screening adds for the Interplanta company, that has earnest looking Americans discussing depression, getting and discarding foreign penpals and even getting a whole new body with “Interplanta it makes your life worth living”.
By the end of the play, it seemed like every part of the families bodies were up for sale. It was for Jaya to put a stop to it, when Phantom Jeetu in an American accent appears asking for Jaya’s eggs to be harvested for him to have children!
Harvest is an excellent play, reflecting a perspective of a donor and his family. It is a strong, haunting story of exploitation, greed, power and destruction of family, morality and society.
The play centers around the lives of a family of four in Bombay, Om, Jaya, Jeetu and Ma.
It deals with organ donations, and the relationship between the donors and the receivers. It reflects the relationship between people living in the rich first world, and their interactions with families living in the poor, third world.
Om supports his family of three- his intelligent wife Jaya, his wild brother Jeetu and his sarcastic mother, Ma. With no jobs available, he has volunteered to became an organ donor. This leads to a lot of changes in the household. The multi national company Interplanta will takeover their lives and monitor all aspects of it. They bring in new furniture, a TV, a water fountain, and different colored pills to serve as substitutes for food.
The donor Ginni, soon appears in their household, through a monitor, and attempts to communicate with the receiver family. This section portrays the stark differences between their lives. For instance when Jaya sneezes, Ginni fears that it might contaminate Om. The dialogue is very receiver centered, she is imbued with all the power in the conversation, she starts it, asks the questions and then hangs up. The donor family are recipients of her money through Interplanta, so are afraid to express what they actually feel. The family is slowly being bought out. For instance the grandmothers ordered a contraption, her cinema paradiso, which comes equipped with food, water, and unlimited tv channels. She prefers watching tv, then participating in the disintegration of her family.
The play used visual media by screening adds for the Interplanta company, that has earnest looking Americans discussing depression, getting and discarding foreign penpals and even getting a whole new body with “Interplanta it makes your life worth living”.
By the end of the play, it seemed like every part of the families bodies were up for sale. It was for Jaya to put a stop to it, when Phantom Jeetu in an American accent appears asking for Jaya’s eggs to be harvested for him to have children!
Harvest is an excellent play, reflecting a perspective of a donor and his family. It is a strong, haunting story of exploitation, greed, power and destruction of family, morality and society.
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