“My Grandmother’s Wi-Fi Password”

My Grandmother’s Wi-Fi Password

When my grandmother finally got Wi-Fi, the whole family treated it like the moon landing.

She lived in a small town, in a house that smelled like cardamom and old books, where the loudest sound was the ticking of a brass wall clock. For years, she had resisted the internet entirely.

“Why do I need it?” she would ask, shooing away our explanations with her wrinkled hands. “I have a landline, a library, and my eyes. What else is there?”

But then, one day, my uncle installed a router in her living room without telling her. The first thing she noticed was the blinking blue light.

“Is that a camera?” she asked, squinting suspiciously.

“No, Dadi,” my cousin said. “That’s your Wi-Fi.”

She frowned. “Why would anyone want why-fy?”

That became the family joke — why-fy. For weeks, she refused to use it. The router sat there, like a polite stranger no one was introducing properly. Until one afternoon, my cousin Riya showed her how to make a WhatsApp video call.

From then on, she was unstoppable.

She’d call everyone — sometimes at 2 p.m., sometimes at 2 a.m. — just to say, “Can you see me? I can see you! Look, my plant is flowering!”

Her old Nokia had been replaced by a budget smartphone, which she used as if it were a walkie-talkie to the world.

One evening, when I visited her after months away, I couldn’t connect to her Wi-Fi. I asked her for the password.

She gave me a blank look. “What’s that?”

“The code to connect,” I explained.

“Oh, that! It’s written on that paper under the photo frame.”

I found the note easily. On a piece of faded stationery, she had written, in her careful cursive:

“iloveyourgrandpa123”

I laughed. “Dadi, this is your password?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said, smiling. “It’s just… cute.”

She looked offended. “What else would I choose? Your grandfather was the one who built this house. His name should open it.”

It was such a simple, pure thought that I didn’t know what to say. To her, passwords weren’t about privacy — they were about connection.

Later that night, while helping her make tea, I asked, “Don’t you ever forget it?”

She smiled, stirring sugar into the cups. “No, beta. Some things you don’t forget. Even if you want to.”

I didn’t understand then. But I would, soon enough.

A month later, my grandmother fell ill. It was nothing dramatic — just age catching up in quiet ways. When she was hospitalized for observation, I stayed with her. The hospital had no Wi-Fi, but she didn’t care.

“I have my stories,” she said, tapping her forehead. “All stored here. No need for passwords.”

She told me one of them that night — about how she met my grandfather during the monsoon of 1958. He was a literature student, she was a teacher. Their first conversation was about poetry and umbrellas.

“Do you know what he said to me the day before our wedding?” she asked, her eyes glinting.

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘Promise me that even when I’m gone, you’ll keep talking to me.’”

When she said it, her voice cracked a little. She hadn’t talked much about him in years, but now she seemed to be remembering him in high definition — every gesture, every joke, every rain-soaked afternoon.

That night, I realized her Wi-Fi password wasn’t a quirky anecdote. It was a love letter disguised as technology.

After she passed away two years later, we gathered at her house to sort through her things. The router still blinked in the corner, dutifully alive. My mother suggested we disconnect it, but I couldn’t.

Instead, I logged in one last time.

The password still worked.

I wandered through her WhatsApp chats — photos of plants, recipes, good morning messages, voice notes full of laughter. There was one group named Family Forever ❤️, with her last message pinned:

“Don’t forget to talk to each other when I’m gone. Even Wi-Fi needs connection to work.”

That line broke me.

I sat there, thinking about how her world had been full of handwritten letters and slow Sundays, and yet she had managed to find meaning in something as modern as Wi-Fi.

For her, connection was sacred — whether through a phone call, a story, or a password.

Before leaving, I changed the router’s name to “Dadi’s Home” and kept the password exactly as it was.

Now, whenever I visit, my phone connects automatically — and for a brief moment, I feel her there.

Maybe that’s her way of keeping the promise she once made to my grandfather.

Maybe, in her own quiet, old-fashioned way, she figured out the real meaning of Wi-Fi — not “wireless fidelity,” but “Why, I feel you.”