The Email

Palak sat down on the laptop with her usual morning cup of coffee. It had been almost a month since she cleared her emails and, every time she looked at her unread email count on the phone, it would start getting on her nerves. Everyone in the family called it her obsession and she knew that it was true. Who in today's world, after checking all primary emails and notifications on the phone itself, would bother sitting down on a laptop and making the effort to clear all other junk, promotional and social emails. But it was something she had done ever since she started using emails. Whether it was years ago when the popular tools were the old school 'Hotmail' and 'Yahoo' or now with the latest version of Gmail, she always had this obsession of clearing and sorting all the emails at least once a week. Her work email was even more sorted and organized. She always used to get irritated when she saw her colleagues' mailboxes with hundreds and sometimes thousands of emails kept unread. The reason given primarily was that these emails were not important like unnecessary reports, group mailers from HR etc. Some of them even said that the unread emails were ones with some important information or needs to be followed up later. Neither of the explanation ever helped her irritation. For her, every email has to be read, unwanted emails deleted, archived or junked, and emails with important information or requiring follow up should properly tagged or color coded and kept in sub-folders. That's the way she had organized her work emails as well as her person mailbox for all these years. No wonder people called it her OCD!

As the system was booting, she thought about the last one month where she had missed this ritual. She had been busy shifting her home and base from Delhi to Amsterdam. While moving houses and cities was not new to her, the last 10 years was the longest she had stayed in one house. The first 20 years of her life had been all about her father's Government job, transfers at least every 3 years and, then it was her own urge to travel for studies, career and once even for the sake of a relationship. The last decade was the first time she had stayed in the same city and house, shared it with same room partner with only one change or addition during the period. This had resulted in lot of hoarding and accumulation typical of her Indian nature. Clearing things had also brought back a lot of nostalgic memories and in turn required extra time to clear up. But it was something she had cherished and enjoyed thoroughly. There is nothing quite like going through one's old stuff and reliving the cherished moments associated with them. She smiled at the thought and logged into her email.

Palak finished clearing and sorting all mailbox and folders. When she looked up at the clock it was just half an hour since she had started. She still had another hour or so all to herself before she would be disturbed. The Covid pandemic, which had hit the world, had ensured that most of her official work had come to a standstill. There were no meetings or conferences to be organized. Most of the government bodies and corporate business were still recovering from the aftermath and more focused internally than external conferences or seminars, which was her area of expertise. Wondering what to do, she decided to first replenish her coffee mug and sat down back again in front of the laptop. As she was about to sign off from email her eyes fell on the starred folder of her mailbox. She could see some count there and decided to clear them off too. The first few were the same old routine ones her old bank loans, financial statements, photos from family weddings she couldn't or, and sometimes intentionally, didn't attend owing to her lifestyle. She realized she hadn't checked this folder for some years now and most of the emails in it were something she wasn't bothered about anymore. She started deleting them one by one, occasionally taking time to check out some of the photos.

As Palak reached the second page of the folder, emails now were running to be almost 10-12 years old. Most of them already addressed but just not untagged. Her eye fell on and email from Avinash Misra. It was dated October 2008 and she didn't remember reading it at all. She had hardly been in touch with Avinash during that period. She would just occasionally hear about him from Shalini, their only common friend from her days in eTravel.com. She remembered that she was on, what she had thought, her final Europe tour back then, just before her final return to India. Maybe that's why she may have marked this email for a reading later on but actually had never got back to it. She clicked it open.