It has been 45 days since we are locked down. I was all in support for lock down as it was done for good for the country. Remember the dialogue ‘If we don’t stay home for 21 days, we will go back 21 years’ I believed in it. I was all energetic and felt it was great opportunity to be take rest.
But When the lock down extension was announced, the feeling of loneliness, hopelessness and prisoner complex slowly started creeping up. Though it was nothing new for me to sit at home and work, it was done by my own volition. Not somebody forced me to do it.
I had exhausted the lazing around phase and switching channels phase in the first week of the lockdown. Then I moved on to laptop, ipad and also mobile and OTT platforms. When all that got boring, I turned my attention towards work. I switched on my computer, started taking stock of the pending tasks and set to work. But then my email address had other ideas.
I was prompted to verify password for one of my work emails (I handle lot of emails for my clients). The alternate email I had listed was my yahoo Id and I had no idea when I logged in. I was in lockdown and there was no power cut, so I dove right in. I tried to log in to my yahoo email id only to find that I have to verify password for that too. And the recovery email was a hotmail id. So here I was sitting in my living room, without spending a penny, taken on a ride in the time machine.
Unfazed, I started digging out the details for password recovery for my hotmail account. It was my first email id which I created by spending Rs 100 per hour in a browsing centre with a dial up connection. When you spend so long to create an email id, common sense states that you wouldn’t forget it. But then..
The Hotmail email id asked for a birth date. There was no back up email id. The system didn’t respond for my birth date. After a great difficulty, I remembered I have given the birth date of my ex girlfriend. It was a wonder that I don’t remember anything about the girl other than her birth date. Mind works in mysterious ways.
Success, I retrieved the password for my Hotmail account, logged in which took made me nostalgic memories of my collage days… those msn messenger and yahoo chat rooms…
Then I retrieved my Yahoo Id password. The last login was April 2007. It was 13 years since I opened my go to email address which had inbox space restrictions and all. So cute. My inbox was filled with birthday reminders from Yahoo calendar and online greetings sent from my friends. I had also got some Skype notifications.
Skype was once pioneer in video chats those days, now hardly anybody uses it. May be it’s a Microsoft thing. The Skype id was used by me for business purposes in my initial days. I was surprised to see one of my earliest customers was still on Skype.
Tess was from Cebu City. She was an English Teacher and also had Cat supplies web store built in Php for which I was supporting her during 2004-05. She had few cats at home. Whenever we had to do a video conversation, we would see a parade of cats walking up and down. She was one of my favourite because she paid me more if I finish the projects before the deadline and was also patient when I took some time to finish the project beyond deadline.
Me: Hi Tess. How are you?
Tess: Oh Jove, I’m not fine today…
Me: Sorry to hear. Is there anyways I could be of help?
Tess: My mother passed away due to covid19 infection last week.
Me: My heartiest condolences. How old was she?
Tess: 93
Me: okay. What happened to your business? Not in touch lately.. I remember we exchanged emails last in dec 2006.
Tess: oh ya.. I got married during Christmas of 2006 and moved to Texas. No one was there to take care of my business in Cebu city and had to close.
Me: Why cant you run your business in Texas?
Tess: No I have to assist my husband’s business.
Me: How is the business going on?
Tess: No. I closed this too after my husband passed away in 2015.
Me: Sorry once again..
Tess: Jove, do not keep feeling for me as I have more disaster in life.
Me: more disaster?
Tess: Yes. I am diagnosed with thyroid cancer a year back. Almost in the last stage now. Doctors lost their hopes during my last consultation. Counting days now…
Me: Don’t know what to say… Truly a series of disaster. Please take care
Tess: Nothing to worry.. you take care too jove. Thanks for your time.
God should had been little merciful. Pressed Alt+F4 and enter key with disturbed thoughts of Tess
