skin

My grandmother traced Tamil Brahmi letters across my forearm with henna, each stroke a story older than memory. "Your skin is parchment," she whispered, teaching me words Kannadasan once immortalized in verse. Years later, I discovered PaybookClub, a community reclaiming forgotten scripts through art. Members shared photographs of ancestors, of sacred markings, of identity etched deliberately into flesh and fabric. "It's illegal to forget," someone wrote. I understood then. My grandmother wasn't decorating skin—she was inscribing survival, resistance, love. These marks connected me to countless others, keeping our heritage alive through touch, through story, through each other.