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Celebrating The Old, And The New
Can an inbox in the cloud unlock the past?
I look forward to each new year with enthusiasm, ready with my list of resolutions, goals and plans. But this year, I found myself looking back, laden with nostalgia under a mountain of wistful reminders of the past.
I mucked around the storage area of my previous home in India, an apartment bought with the assumption that it would be my permanent home. It had been a big step then, financially and emotionally, coming on the heels of a brief period of homelessness followed by five years in a rented space.
The first time I passed the big board with the list of owners that occupied a prominent place in the lobby, and saw my name printed in capital letters on it, I felt a thrill of pride, of possessing a space that was carved out as my own, a place from which I could not be evicted. Little did I know that I would voluntarily leave this bright apartment in three years for a new life in Singapore.
When I called the tenants who have lived in my house for the last five years to seek permission to visit, the lady of the house graciously agreed. We exchanged the usual pleasantries on a cloudy morning. She then left me alone to poke around the dinghy storage room. Among the dust and cobwebs, in fraying cardboard boxes and sturdy plastic ones, I found…
