Harvest

A futuristic satire on the trade in live organs from the Third World to the West.
Om, a young man is driven by unemployment to sell his body parts for cash. Guards arrive to make his home into a germ-free zone. When his brother Jeetu returns unexpectedly, he is taken away as the donor. Om can’t accept this. Java, his wife, is left alone. Will she too be seduced into selling her body for use by the rich westerners?


Harvest won first prize in the first Onassis Cultural Competition for Theatre and was premiered in Greek at the Teatro Texnis, Athens. It has also been performed by a youth theatre in the UK, broadcast by the BBC World Service and made into a feature film, directed by Govind Nihalani, titled Body, which was screened at the Regus London Film Festival. The play is also studied by many colleges and universities to explain how globalisation works.

Manjula Padmanbhan

Born in Delhi to a diplomat family in 1953, she went to boarding school in her teenage years. After college, her determination to make her own way in life led to works in publishing and media-related fields.

She won the Greek Onassis Award for her play Harvest. An award-winning film Deham was made by Govind Nihalani based on the play.

She has written one more powerful play, Lights Out! (1984), Hidden Fires is a series of monologues. The Artist's Model (1995) and Sextet are her other works.(1996).

She has also authored a collection of short stories, called Kleptomania. Her most recent book, published in 2008, is Escape.

Apart from writing newspaper columns she created comic strips. She created Suki, an Indian comic character, which was serialized as a strip in the Sunday Observer.Before 1997 (the year her play Harvest was staged) she was better known as a cartoonist and had a daily cartoon strip in The Pioneer newspaper.

As playwright

1984 — “Lights Out”

2003. Harvest. London: Aurora Metro Press.

As Author and Illustrator

2013. Three Virgins and Other Stories New Delhi, India: Zubaan Books.

2015. Island of Lost Girls. Hachette.

2011. I am different! Can you find me? Watertown, Mass: Charlesbridge Pub.

2008. Escape. Hachette.

2005. Unprincess! New Delhi: Puffin Books.

1986. A Visit to the City Market New Delhi: National Book Trust

2003. Mouse Attack

As Illustrator

Baig, Tara Ali, and Manjula Padmanabhan. 1979. Indrani and the enchanted jungle. New Delhi: Thomson Press (India) Ltd.

Maithily Jagannathan and Manjula Padmanabhan. 1984. Droopy dragon. New Delhi: Thomson Press.

Comic Strips

2005. Double talk. New Delhi: Penguin Books.