The Day My Grandmother Was Everywhere

Today, during my weekly visit to Lord Hanuman, I came across a very old woman, her spine bent with age, her body carrying the unmistakable weight of time. Each step she took felt deliberate, as if the years themselves were guiding her forward. There was a quiet dignity in the way she stood there, fragile yet unwavering, as though life had folded her body but not her spirit.

She was trying to climb a short flight of stairs, yet her body refused to obey her will. Each step stood before her like a quiet challenge, and she paused, caught between desire and limitation, gathering courage from somewhere deeper than strength. It wasn’t defeat that slowed her, but the long conversation between age and gravity, where every movement demanded patience, grace, and silent resolve.

I reached for her hand 

I held it like the way I once held my grandmother’s, instinctively, gently, as if my palm already knew the language. In that moment, the idea of this blog was born, not as a thought, but as a feeling, Quiet, Tender, and Heavy with memory. 

Her Skin was glowing like gold, but the paper-thin hands carried a weight, my hands could never understand.  Her fingers curled around mine, not tightly, not weakly, just enough. Enough to say thank you without words. Enough to say I’m still here. 

Up close, I could see her skin clearly. It was a geography of years, creases that looked like dried riverbeds, spots that felt like old sunsets trapped beneath the surface. Every mark seemed earned. Nothing accidental,  Nothing wasted. This was not skin that had merely aged, this was skin that had lived.

Her skin has held fires and winters. It remembers mornings that began before sunrise and nights that ended long after everyone else had slept. It remembers cooking meals she never got to eat hot. It remembers waiting, for letters, for people, for days to pass.

And suddenly, my grandmother was everywhere.

In the way this woman paused before moving.
In the way she trusted a stranger’s hand without suspicion.
In the way her body bore the evidence of a life spent giving more than taking.

I realized then that old skin carries more than wrinkles. It carries unspoken love. Unacknowledged labor. Silent sacrifices that never demanded applause. Skin like hers remembers kitchens that smelled of spices and sweat. Courtyards echoing with children’s voices. Nights where pain was swallowed so others could sleep peacefully.

We talk so much about anti-aging, as if aging were an enemy. Standing there, holding her hand, I felt ashamed of that language. Because what I was touching was not decline, it was accumulation. Layer upon layer of courage, patience, endurance.

When she finally let go of my hand, she nodded once and moved on, slowly. No dramatic goodbye. No lingering moment. Just another quiet exit, the way women like her have been leaving rooms their entire lives, without noise, without credit.

But she stayed with me.

In my chest.  In my hands.  In the sudden heaviness behind my eyes.

This blog did not begin as words on a screen. It began as a tremor in my fingers, as memory brushing against the present. It began with skin that had seen too much to complain and a spine bent not by weakness, but by time doing what time always does.

And I know now, 
when I think of age,
when I think of dignity,
when I think of my Grand maa

I will think of that hand in mine, and the quiet strength it carried.