Have you ever had the pleasure of cleaning up a mailbox? If you haven't, let me tell you that it is not an easy task. I should know because I tried it yesterday.

I started with the oldest mails first, obviously thinking that it would be easy to get rid of them. Turns out that was a big mistake. Most of these emails contain stories or beautiful pictures - something that I didn't really have a heart to purge - notwithstanding the fact that the next time I look at them could well be 5 years from now.

Some mails are from people who have long since moved out of my life. If I were to write to them today, I wonder if they will even be able to recall who I am. Silly as it may sound, I couldn't delete these mails either - God only knows why since it is very unlikely that I will ever write to them again.

The remaining mails are from people who have somehow managed to remain friends with me even today :-) I know why I will keep these mails - for the sheer pleasure of forwarding these to them one day with a "Do you remember this mail?". There is one mail which contains a long discussion about Project management, there is another one with similar detailed discussion about whether to go for direct investment into stocks or not and then there is one which talks about one song that remains favorite to this day :-)

Of course, in the end I did manage to purge some mails - long forgotten job postings, communication from mutual funds and assorted mails from banks! I think I will not attempt another "spring-cleaning" for the next one month at least :-)