A Squash Player is Selling His Kidney to Help Fund His Career

Hey, buddy, need a kidney? It's a genuine question. Seriously, if you or anyone you know is in the market for one – either to replace a faulty unit or to compliment the existing two – get on the phone to Indian squash ace Ravi Dixit. Because he's selling one.

Actually, this story isn't so much loltastic as harrowing and bleak. The 22-year-old can't raise the funding to travel to next month's South Asian Games, so he's offered up a kidney for 800,000 rupees (£8,227) to make his dream come true.

Dixit made the request on Facebook, and he has now launched a social media campaign to shift the organ. As you do, right? Remember when you were 15 and you sold your PS2 to get a ticket to Reading Festival because Evan Dando was playing? It's just like that but on a bigger scale.

Except it's nothing like that at all, because it's his fucking kidney, an organ that serves a variety of essential regulatory roles in the body.

Thinking about it more deeply, it's a horrific prospect. Aside from the long-term health determent of being one kidney down, it would also be a nasty shock to Dixit's body to lop one out. This isn't like donating blood: they will need to cut him open and fish about inside for an organ, get it out of there and stitch the guy up again. That's going to be sore in the morning, dude.

You get the feeling that perhaps Dixit doesn't want to sell his kidney at all. Maybe – just maybe – he planned the whole thing so that gullible schmucks like us would write stories about him and publish his picture. Then he can go to sponsors and say, "hey, look at all the press I generated – you should invest in me!"

Or maybe he hopes family and friends will step in to stop him making a huge mistake. Just like when I threatened to sell the PS2 to buy a Reading ticket and my dad gave me the money because he couldn't live without Grand Theft Auto 3, the old fool.

If Dixit has it all mapped out, then well done to him and good luck in the South Asian Games. If he didn't – if he actually plans to sell it to raise the cash – then he's clearly in need of urgent help. I never thought I'd have to write this, but no transnational squash tournament is worth losing a kidney over.

[Metro]