I dug out an old email account today. Dutifully changed passwords, filled in a retarded questionnaire just so as I could retrieve the long dysfunctional account. I have not used it in ages, clearly, even though I live half my life online and having a spare, functional email id is exceedingly lucrative.
There was nothing of decent worth in that account, some stray mails and forwards with almost negligible emotional value that I had not deleted just so as the account would not look hauntingly empty (email accounts have feelings too!) and two folders with some worthwhile content.
And then there were some love mails, letters for their emotional content. But mails for all the coding in the world wide web is worth. All right there. From the almost retarded innocence of things starting afresh to the painful volley of lies and apologies that it ended with. The laughter, the crazy fonts, the colours, highlights, attachments - it was like almost two and a half years of some impossible explanations lay right there in that abandoned account.
Almost in an escapist instinct I wanted to delete them all. I hesitated. Sat back. I don't think I want to re-read those mails again. It feels like I am violating someone else's email account. And I don't think I can entirely get myself to delete them either. I perhaps shall try in a month's time. Or maybe in a year. I might have gathered a sliver of indecency by then - to read in to each and everyone of those mails, systematically, like I am unraveling a stranger's life out.
Every word, every feeling in those lines come as an indecent shock to me. I cannot fathom those feelings or those thoughts. Seems like such an impossibility.
The last mail in that folder was sent on 19 April, 2010. The person who wrote those mails and the person who those mails were written to - I am no longer her. And I have not written a mail like that in ages.
There was nothing of decent worth in that account, some stray mails and forwards with almost negligible emotional value that I had not deleted just so as the account would not look hauntingly empty (email accounts have feelings too!) and two folders with some worthwhile content.
And then there were some love mails, letters for their emotional content. But mails for all the coding in the world wide web is worth. All right there. From the almost retarded innocence of things starting afresh to the painful volley of lies and apologies that it ended with. The laughter, the crazy fonts, the colours, highlights, attachments - it was like almost two and a half years of some impossible explanations lay right there in that abandoned account.
Almost in an escapist instinct I wanted to delete them all. I hesitated. Sat back. I don't think I want to re-read those mails again. It feels like I am violating someone else's email account. And I don't think I can entirely get myself to delete them either. I perhaps shall try in a month's time. Or maybe in a year. I might have gathered a sliver of indecency by then - to read in to each and everyone of those mails, systematically, like I am unraveling a stranger's life out.
Every word, every feeling in those lines come as an indecent shock to me. I cannot fathom those feelings or those thoughts. Seems like such an impossibility.
The last mail in that folder was sent on 19 April, 2010. The person who wrote those mails and the person who those mails were written to - I am no longer her. And I have not written a mail like that in ages.
1 comment:
We're always changing who we are. But why delete old mails? It's all a part of you. It would be like deleting yourself.
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