The Dry Season of Bitter Gourds

In the sweltering summer of 2011, I moved to the town of Malgudi, a place named for the fictional setting of R.K. Narayan’s novels but far less charming. As a post-graduate student of literature, I had rented a modest two-room house on the outskirts, surrounded by arhar fields and the occasional buffalo. The town was a relic of the pre-digital era, where rumors of witches and spirits held more weight than news from the state capital. My landlord, a gaunt old man with a twisted spine, had warned me with surprising calm: ‘The house was built on the site of an old cremation ground. The dead don’t always move on.’ I dismissed it with the arrogance of a city-bred student.

I had a desktop computer, my only luxury, and I spent my evenings typing transcripts for a research institute in the city. In that first week, I noticed the smell—a faint, sweet odor of rotting flowers, sour and cloying, that clung to the corners of the house. I scrubbed the floors, burned incense, but it lingered like a stubborn guest. I named it ‘the ghost of the previous tenant,’ a joke to myself, but deep down, I felt a pricking at the back of my neck every time I turned the corner.

My only social life revolved around three local lads—Ravi, Suresh, and Vikram—who were fascinated by my computer. They’d crowd around the CRT monitor like it was a window to another world, and I, in turn, found their superstitions amusing. They’d whisper about the ‘biryan’ of Malgudi—a spectral woman who roamed the fields at dusk, carrying a basket of bitter gourds, offering them to travelers. If you accepted, you’d be cursed to see her face in every reflection, and within a month, you’d waste away, skin yellowing like a gourd left to dry.

I laughed, but during the harsh summer, when the sun turned the sky to brass and the air was thick with dust, I woke one night to the sound of something moving over my chest. It felt like a cold, dry hand, pressing lightly. I lay frozen, and then it withdrew. The room was empty, but the smell of burnt earth and something sickly sweet filled my nostrils.

I blamed it on the heat and the insomnia it brought. But the next morning, I noticed bitter gourd vines had begun to creep over the western wall of my house, thick and green, though the summer had scorched everything else. I had not planted them. Ravi, when he came that evening, went pale. He pointed to a single gourd gleaming among the leaves, unusually long and pale, like a malformed finger. He muttered, ‘That’s her produce. You must destroy the vine before the full moon.’

I shrugged it off, but that night, as I worked at my computer, the cursor on the screen began to move on its own. It typed a single word in the notepad: ‘EAT’. I stared, heart hammering, and then the mouse went dead. Over the next days, the windows would open by themselves, the curtains billowing despite the still air, and I would hear the faint sound of a woman humming an old folk song. I grew paranoid, refused to sleep without the lights on, and lashed out at my friends when they tried to joke about it.

I finally decided to find out what the vine was about. I remembered my landlord’s words and sought him out. He sat on his porch, weaving a basket from dried reeds, and when I mentioned the vine and the occurrences, he looked at me with pity. ‘You’ve bought the old cremation ground. The woman who haunts these fields—she was a widow, ostracized for something, and she hanged herself from a peepal tree where your house now stands. They buried her unceremoniously, but her spirit lingers, seeking someone to finish her unfinished work—to deliver her bitter gourds to the one who wronged her.’

‘Who wronged her?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper. The landlord shrugged and told me the story: the daughter of a wealthy farmer, she was betrothed to a man who left her at the altar after slandering her. Her father, enraged, cast her out. She was found dead weeks later. Villagers believed she put a curse on the man, but it was never lifted. ‘The curse,’ he said, ‘is that anyone who lives here will receive a bitter gourd from her, and if they eat it, they will die. If they refuse, she will haunt them until they go mad. But there’s a third way—you must offer her a gourd of your own, grown without water, and place it at the crossroads, and say these words…’ He hesitated. ‘But you’ll have to find a gourd that has not been watered in the drought, but the drought is over, so it’s impossible. You’d have to plant one now and keep it dry, but the rains will come soon.’

I didn’t believe him, but I remembered the vine. I returned home and saw that the single gourd had grown larger, and three new ones were forming. The smell was stronger. I was terrified. I decided to try the impossible: I uprooted the vine and planted a new seed in a pot, covered with a glass bowl to shield it from rain, and placed it on the roof, hoping to keep it dry. But the sun was brutal, and the seedling withered. I panicked, thinking that I’d doomed myself.

That night, the cursor typed again: ‘YOU MUST EAT.’ The humming grew louder, and I saw a shadow pass under the door. I grabbed a kitchen knife and sat in the farthest corner, my back to the wall. The hours stretched. At dawn, I felt something drop into my lap—a fresh bitter gourd, still cool, with a note shriveled as if ancient: ‘For the one who took my name.’ I didn’t know what that meant.

I ran to the landlord, showing the gourd. His face was ashen. He whispered, ‘She thinks you are the man who wronged her—he had the same name, Devraj.’ My name was Divakar, but close. ‘You must perform the ritual tonight at midnight, at the crossroads,’ he said. ‘But you need a gourd you’ve grown. There’s no time.’ I was desperate. I knelt by the wilted seedling, weeping, and in my despair, I cursed the sky. And then I heard a voice, soft and maternal: ‘Water it with your tears, and it will grow overnight.’ I was too scared to question it. I wept into the soil until the seedling perked up. By evening, a small gourd had appeared, still pale.

At midnight, I went to the crossroads, the gourd in my hand. The moon was full, but clouds covered it. I placed the gourd on the dusty ground and tried to remember the words the landlord had taught me: ‘O spirit of the bitter ground, take this gift from my hand, release me from this brand, let the gourd be your command.’ I repeated it thrice. The wind picked up, whipping dust into spirals, and I heard a woman’s laugh, high and mocking. Then silence. The gourd was still there, but it had split open, and inside was a single white seed. I took it as a sign of dismissal and fled home.

The vine on my wall turned brown and died overnight, and the smell vanished. The house felt lighter. My friends, when they came the next day, saw the withered vine and the hollow gourd, and they whispered that I was blessed. But as I told them the story, I caught a glimpse of the screen: a new file had been saved, titled ‘Bitter Gourd Recipe’. Though I never typed it, the text read: ‘Grown from tears, watered with grief, eaten with gratitude—she frees you. But she will always watch for the next Devraj.’

I couldn’t sleep in that house anymore. I packed and left within the week, leaving behind the computer, the cursors, and the memory of that night. And I never looked back, but to this day, I can’t stand the smell of bitter gourd. And sometimes, when I’m alone and the wind stills, I hear the faint sound of a woman humming a lullaby, and I think: ‘She’s waiting for someone else.’