The Story Behind Inherited Skincare: How a Grandmother's Rituals Became a Brand

There is a particular quality of light in my grandmother Leela's kitchen in the early evening — warm, golden, smelling of cardamom and something richer, more ancient. I was seven years old the first time I watched her open the small brass pot she kept on the highest shelf, the one I was never allowed to touch. Inside was ghee — not the cooking kind, but something she had washed and worked with her own hands over many days. She would take a small amount, warm it between her palms, and smooth it across her face with the quiet certainty of someone who has never needed a second opinion.

I didn't understand what I was watching then. I just knew it was important.

Growing Up Between Two Worlds

I grew up in a household where beauty was never bought — it was inherited. My mother learned from Leela, and I learned from both of them. Turmeric in milk for inflammation. Rosehip oil for the hands. And always, always, the ghee for the face before sleep. These weren't spa treatments or wellness trends. They were simply what you did. What the women in our family had always done.

When I moved to the United Kingdom in my twenties, I brought those rituals with me. What I didn't anticipate was how differently my skin would respond to a British winter. The cold air, the central heating, the change in water — within months, my skin felt like a stranger to me. I walked the aisles of every chemist and department store I could find, reading ingredients lists that looked more like chemistry homework than anything I recognised as nourishment.

The Moment Everything Clicked

One winter evening, homesick and dry-skinned, I found myself thinking about Leela's brass pot. I thought: if this worked for her — and her mother, and her mother's mother — why isn't this available here? Why isn't there a product rooted in this wisdom, made to the safety standards British consumers rightly expect, and honest about every ingredient?

That question became Inherited Skincare.

It took years. I learned how to properly wash and refine ghee using the traditional shatadhauta ghrita method — a process involving repeated water-washing that transforms ghee into a light, silky, deeply nourishing balm. I worked with cosmetic chemists and safety assessors to ensure every formula met CPSR standards. Every product is made in the UK, cruelty-free, and built around ingredients I would have recognised on Leela's shelf.

What 'Inherited' Means to Me

The name was never in question. Everything I know about caring for skin, I inherited. Not from a textbook or a beauty editor, but from a woman who cooked, prayed, and tended to her skin in the same small kitchen for sixty years. Leela is in her eighties now. Her skin, I should mention, is remarkable.

Inherited Skincare exists because I believe that wisdom deserves to travel — across generations, across oceans. That what worked in a grandmother's kitchen in Delhi can work for you, right now, wherever you are. We just had to make sure it arrived safely.