The Last Bath

In the autumn of 1932, in the remote village of Karsala, the river Sonali was the lifeblood of the community. Every dawn, the women of Karsala would gather at the river’s edge, their laughter echoing off the water as they performed their morning rituals. My great-grandmother, Amala, was among them. She was a woman of simple habits, and the river was her sanctuary.

One morning, as the rooster’s crow cut through the pre-dawn darkness, Amala rose and made her way to the river. The air was unusually still, and a thick fog clung to the ground, muffling the world in a ghostly silence. She expected to see her friends, but the path was empty. She walked on, a knot of unease tightening in her stomach. When she reached the riverbank, she saw only one woman bathing alone. The woman was a stranger, her hair black as coal, and she smiled as if expecting Amala.

‘Sister, you’re early,’ the woman called out, her voice sweet but with an odd hollow ring. ‘But since you’re here, why not join me? The others will come soon.’ Amala hesitated, but the water looked inviting, and she didn’t want to seem rude. She waded in, the cold water sending a shiver up her spine. The stranger introduced herself as Meera, a visitor from a nearby village. They talked about mundane things, but Amala couldn’t shake the feeling that Meera’s eyes never blinked, and her smile never faltered.

As they talked, Amala noticed something strange. The water around Meera seemed dark, almost oily, and it didn’t reflect her image. Amala rubbed her eyes, thinking it was a trick of the light, but when she looked again, the reflection was still absent. A chill ran down her back, but she forced herself to continue the conversation. ‘How long have you been here?’ Amala asked. ‘Oh, a long time,’ Meera replied, a hint of sadness in her voice. ‘I’ve been waiting for someone to join me.’

Just then, Amala heard the distant sound of her friends approaching, their voices carried on the wind. ‘Ah, there they are,’ she said, relief flooding her. But Meera’s smile widened, and she said, ‘They can’t see me, only you.’ Amala turned to the path and saw her friends coming, but they seemed to walk right past her, not even glancing her way. When she turned back to Meera, she was gone, leaving only a swirl of dark water.

Amala scrambled out of the river, her heart pounding. She called out to her friends, but they acted as if they didn’t hear her. They bathed, laughed, and left, leaving Amala alone on the bank. She ran home, but when she reached her house, she found her family mourning. They told her she had been missing for three days, and they had feared she had drowned. Amala insisted she had only been gone an hour, but they showed her a calendar. Three days.

From that day on, Amala never bathed in the river again. She would wash only with water drawn from the well, and she avoided the river at all costs. But sometimes, at the edge of her vision, she would catch a glimpse of a woman with coal-black hair, standing in the shallows, her reflection nowhere to be seen. And she would hear a faint whisper, ‘Why did you leave me alone?’

Years later, before Amala passed away, she told me this story, her eyes haunted. She said that on that morning, she had met the ghost of a woman who had drowned in the Sonali years before, waiting for company. She had been spared, but she carried the curse of knowing. The last time I saw the river, I felt a pull, a longing, and I understood why Amala never returned. The river takes a piece of you, and it never lets go.