Ouch

By ​Khushi Bajaj

​You would think that it would have started with a chorus of whispers, but it was actually a big ‘ouch!’ We were in the ambulance, transporting my sister Sanah’s body from the hospital to our home, when a pothole made the vehicle jerk and Sanah’s head hit the metal rod behind the bed. One would assume that I would have initially believed, or at least wanted to believe, that it was Sanah who had exclaimed so, but the truth is that no part of it sounded like her voice. No, this was a high-pitched shriek, grueling to the ears in a way that made me immediately put my hands over them. But when I looked around, nobody else had reacted like me. Or reacted at all, for they were all still sitting and crying silently.
 
The next time the voices spoke was when more than fifty visitors had already paid their respects to Sanah’s form. All fifty had asked me, one by one and in great detail, about exactly how Sanah had died. They had barely crossed the threshold when they had said, "Haye haye, how did this happen?” They had wanted to know about the accident, about the hospitalisation, about the organ transplant failure. They had wanted me to relive losing her over and over. But the voices did not. They already knew everything. Their concern was different. “Mansi,” they called out to me pleadingly, “we are all entangled here.” So when everyone went to eat lunch in the pandal, I grabbed my comb and brought it downstairs. But I could feel them breathe out disapprovingly as soon as I touched them with it, so I decided to take them in my hands instead, detangling them strand by strand with my fingers, stroking my sister’s head as I did it. When Maa walked in she put a hand on my shoulder and said, “she’s gone,” but I already knew that. I already knew that Sanah was gone. But they were still here. Somehow, they hadn’t followed her.
 
I knew that even though more and more people were visiting each day, the voices would feel alone on the grass mat. When they asked me to get rid of Sanah’s least favourite aunt, I spilled oil on her feet, and when they told me that the direct sunlight was annoying them, I put a fan near Sanah’s face. By the third day they grew tired of being in one single position, so I started massaging her scalp, but crying relatives pulled me away and told me that I must stay together for Sanah’s sake. They did not understand that there was no point in doing anything for Sanah’s sake anymore, but doing things for the voices made sense. Doing things for them was non-negotiable.
 
During nights, when most visitors had left, I would talk to the voices about my childhood with Sanah and they would laugh, reminding me that they had been there and seen us grow up in real-time. The problem came when my family decided that it was time to burn Sanah’s body. I tried to pay a pandit to lie to them that her kundali showed that she would only get access to heaven if we performed a tonsure ceremony, but he backed out at the last minute. Then I tried to convince my mother that since Sanah was still young, we should bury her instead of burning her. The truth is that I was not sure if they would be able to breathe six feet under, but I planned to take a shovel and dig them out after a couple of hours anyway. When that also did not work, I took Sanah’s head in my lap and leaned down to whisper to them, “Help me.”
 
“Cry,” they replied, “cry a lot.”
 
So I started bawling, saying that I was not ready to say goodbye to Sanah yet. Lying, because I knew there was no Sanah left to say goodbye to. But I couldn’t let them die, so I had to do something. Eventually relatives pulled me away and took me to my room, patting my back and telling me that she was in a better place now. “There is no better place,” I wanted to scream, “there is only here or not.”
 
When we left for the cremation ground, the voices kept pleading with me to save them all the way on the ride over. I did not know what to do till the very last minute, when I leaned over Sanah’s face and grabbed a few strands, pulling them out and then whispering to them to see if they would respond. When they hummed happily, I decided that I needed to pull out more, so I started wrapping them around my fingers and pulling them out in bunches. When my father noticed mid-tears, he roared, “Mansi, what is wrong with you?” but I kept pulling till I was placed in a different car and driven home. My family tried to take them from me, but I refused to give them up, stuffing them in my pockets and running upstairs.
 
Once I reached my room, I divided my hair into two sections and started braiding them in, one at a time, until they were completely mixed with my own hair. I then switched off the light and went to bed, knowing that they would whisper made-up lullabies about Sanah and my adventures in my ears till I went to sleep. And beyond. 

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​Khushi Bajaj (she/her) is a multilingual poet and writer from Lucknow, India. Her work has previously been published by Penguin Random House, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Feminism in India, and more. She has won the international Briefly Write Poetry Prize, and been highly commended for the Disabled Poets Prize and the erbacce-prize. Her debut chapbook ‘The Girl Who Ate Words’ is forthcoming with Parlyaree Press. She is passionate about intersectional feminist politics, supporting local communities, and radical kindness.