We are all suckers for nostalgia!
Time and again we revisit some old memory and think of how good the good old days were.
School and college friends top the list among the things that make us nostalgic. This is closely followed by places, songs, scents, photographs, and other objects that remind us of memorable times in our lives.
For my generation that grew up in the pre-internet era in the 80s and 90s we had our greeting cards (thank you Archies), handwritten letters, and other trinkets that trigger memories even now.
In the process of shifting homes, cities, etc. or on the pretext of growing up some of us lost those artefacts. Some (like me) still have things stuffed in a box and stored in an attic somewhere, to be revisited once in a few years.
That’s how we preserved our memories…and then the internet happened.
When everything went online
1998 was the year I got my first email ID—a Hotmail account.
I was in the final year of college then. The year when all of us branched into different paths, either for higher studies or work.
Handwritten letters were replaced by spending time at internet cafes, one expensive hour at a time, to reach out to friends and family. We shared detailed notes about our lives, our dreams, and needless to say—explored potential opportunities to either cement existing relationships or to build new ones (a subtle way to not use the F word, no, not the one you are thinking of).
Our entire history slowly moved online into those mailboxes—announcing our first jobs, our marriage, birth of our children, vacation details, and so on—there was hardly any trail in the physical world; everything was virtual. And with digital cameras slowing making an entry into our lives even photographs became virtual.
Those were the heydays of Hotmail and Yahoo.
By 2007-08 we slowly migrated to Gmail, and in a few years post that we completely migrated to Gmail and social networks like Facebook.
The old Hotmail and Yahoo accounts became those boxes in the attic, to be revisited occasionally over the years.
And then…
Couple of years back I tried logging into my Hotmail account and realised that my entire mailbox was cleared by Microsoft because I wasn’t logging in regularly. It was a devastating moment for me. Took me time to come to terms with losing that crucial piece of history of my life. I had a major part of my memories stored in my Yahoo mailbox too, so that was some consolation.
And then last week, I logged into my Yahoo account after a considerable amount of time, thanks to the pandemic speeding up years in-between—and guess what?
My Yahoo account was erased clean too. All my history gone. Gone for good.
And that’s when I felt like the most stupid person on earth!
I shouldn’t have trusted the internet to keep my memories with it. I am not sure how long ago you checked your old email accounts—maybe it’s RIP memories there too—do check right away.
But the bigger question is…
Nowadays every memory is more or less confined to WhatsApp chats. Some of us have automatic backup of our snaps to Google or Apple photos. We are completely dependent on the cloud, including listening to music, watching movies, etc.
What if there’s another Hotmail moment there too—can we handle that shock. We certainly won’t be yelling Yahoo at that point of time.
So my simple message to you is this:
Don’t be stupid like me—take offline backups of content that matters to you.
If there are 1000s of photographs, pick the ones that matter to you most and print them out. If there are wonderful mails or messages you exchanged and would like to cherish them—take printouts of those too. They have better chances of survival than being in the cloud.
Just don’t be stupid like me.
If you don’t care about any of those memories—maybe you are a really smart one.
Then it makes us, the nostalgic ones, look stupid once again.
Whatever it is, take this as a warning, and make amends as needed.
Till then,
Cheers!!!
Kartik Dayanand Boddapati
Do spread the word among your friends too. You don’t want them to end up being stupid like me.