The song that always reminds me of my grandmother is Lag Ja Gale, an old Hindi film song from the nineteen-sixties sung by the famous playback singer Lata Mangeshkar. The title roughly means 'embrace me', and it's a slow, gentle love song.
My grandmother lived with us in Jaipur when I was growing up, and she was a huge fan of old film music. She had a small transistor radio that she kept on the kitchen windowsill, and every evening while she cooked, she'd tune into a station that played classic songs. Whenever this one came on, she'd turn the volume up, stop chopping vegetables and sing along in a quiet, slightly shaky voice. I must have first heard it when I was about five, sitting on the kitchen floor doing my homework, and I assumed for years that it was her song, because she sang it so often.
It reminds me of her for obvious reasons, but it's more than just repetition. The song is about holding on to a precious moment because it might not come again, and later I found out it had been playing on the radio the evening my grandfather proposed to her. So for her it carried a whole life story. She passed away when I was nineteen, and at her funeral my uncle played it from his phone, and everyone broke down. Now I'm a software developer in Pune, and when I'm homesick I put it on while I'm cooking. It's strange, but for those four minutes I can almost smell her kitchen and hear the radio crackling.