You touched their feet. What did they just promise you?

The hand that answers back

You bend at the waist, reach toward the floor near someone's feet, and before your fingers get there a hand finds the top of your head. That hand is the reply.

The gesture is called पैर छूना (pair chhūnā, touching feet), and the greeting you breathe out as you bend is usually प्रणाम (praṇām) or, in many North Indian homes, चरण स्पर्श (charaṇ sparś, "I touch your feet"). You're offering respect. What comes back — the hand, and a sentence said over the top of your head — is a blessing: a wish for your life, delivered in the second it takes you to straighten up.

Most heritage speakers know the choreography by heart and lose the words. The words are the whole point.

जीते रहो, खुश रहो, सुखी रहो

The three you'll hear most are plain, warm, and built from verbs you already half-know.

जीते रहो (jīte raho) is the big one: "keep living," "may you live long." जीते comes from जीना (jīnā, to live), and रहो (raho) keeps it going, the way "keep" does in English. When your dādī presses it into your scalp, she is quite literally asking the universe to let you stay. खुश रहो (khush raho) is "stay happy." सुखी रहो (sukhī raho) reaches past a good mood for something steadier — सुखी (sukhī) is contentment, the settled kind, the opposite of restlessness.

None of these are questions, so none of them want an answer. They want to land on you and stay there.

फूलो-फलो, and the Sanskrit one

Some blessings come dressed up. फूलो-फलो (phūlo-phalo) is a gardener's wish — फूलना (phūlnā) is to flower, फलना (phalnā) is to bear fruit — so an elder is telling you to bloom and then to fruit, to flourish in both senses at once.

The most formal you'll meet is Sanskrit, and it bends for gender: आयुष्मान भव (āyuṣmān bhava) to a boy or man, आयुष्मती भव (āyuṣmatī bhava) to a girl or woman. Both mean "may you be long-lived," with भव (bhava) being an old, ceremonial "may you be." A priest might say it; so might a very traditional grandfather who likes the old weight of the words. If one lands on you, you've just been blessed in the oldest language in the room.

Why it's रहो, never रहिए

Here's the grammar hiding in plain sight. Hindi has three ways to say "you" — आप (āp, respectful), तुम (tum, familiar), तू (tū, intimate) — and each one reshapes the verb. The polite command form of रहना (rahnā, to stay) is रहिए (rahie); the familiar is रहो (raho); the intimate is रह (rah).

Notice what the elder chooses. You just gave them your deepest respect, the आप treatment, by bowing to their feet. They answer in तुम or तू — जीते रहो, खुश रह — the forms you'd use for a child, a sibling, someone folded close. They will almost never say जीते रहिए (jīte rahie) to you, because रहिए would hold you at a polite arm's length, and that is the opposite of what a blessing is for.

So the exchange has a shape: the respect travels up; the tenderness comes back down.

The ones that show their age

Not every old blessing has aged evenly. You may still hear सदा सुहागन रहो (sadā suhāgan raho) said to a married woman — सुहागन (suhāgan) means a woman whose husband is living, so the wish is, bluntly, that her husband always outlive her. It was meant with love in a world that measured a woman's fortune that way. Many families have retired it; plenty still say it on reflex at a wedding.

You don't have to referee any of this. It helps simply to know what the words carry, so that when one is said over you or someone beside you, you understand which century it's speaking from — and can let the warmth through while leaving the assumption where it belongs.

How to stand back up

The easy part comes last: a blessing is received, not answered. You don't reply to जीते रहो the way you'd reply to a question — you let it land. The bow does most of the talking, and a soft जी (jī, a respectful "yes") on the way up is plenty. Warmth beats vocabulary here every time.

As you go down, you can say प्रणाम (praṇām) or चरण स्पर्श (charaṇ sparś); both simply name what you're doing. And you don't have to reach the floor — reach toward the feet and most elders will catch your shoulders halfway, which is its own small blessing. Do that, hear the words, and let the hand on your head mean what it means. You were just wished a long, happy life by someone who had the standing to wish it.