After fiddling with snakes (read Python) & gem hunting (read Ruby), finally I have found the pearl of wisdom to wash away the conky blues

First install these script dependencies,
sudo apt-get install perl
sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl
sudo apt-get install libwww-perl
Next copy-paste following code in your text-editor,
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use XML::Simple;
use LWP::Simple;
my $u = $ARGV[0];
my $p = $ARGV[1];
my $xmldata = get("https://$u:$p\@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom");
my $xml = new XML::Simple;
my $data = $xml->XMLin($xmldata);
my @arr = reverse sort keys %{$data->{'entry'}};
if (@arr != 0 ) {
print "[$u] :: New mails ". @arr ."\n";
my $n = 3;
$n = @arr if @arr < 3;
for(my $i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
my $title = substr $data->{'entry'}->{$arr[$i]}->{'title'}, 0, 45;
my $frm = substr $data->{'entry'}->{$arr[$i]}->{'author'}->{'name'}, 0, 30;
my $dt = substr $data->{'entry'}->{$arr[$i]}->{'modified'}, 0, 10;
print "\n";
print "From: $frm, Date: $dt\n";
print "$title\n";
}
print "\n";
} else {
print "No new mail..\n";
}
exit 0;
Now by default this script will show the last three (3) unread mails. If you want to change this number, edit the following line in the script (line number 13),
my $n = 3;
Save the script with the name 'check-gmail.pl' somewhere in your $PATH and give it execute permissions,
chmod 755 /path/to/check-gmail.pl
Next open your .conkyrc in text-editor and add following line to call 'check-gmail.pl' via conky,
execi 600 perl /path/to/check-gmail.pl "your_gmail_username" "your_gmail_password"
Of-course you will need to replace "your_gmail_username" and "your_gmail_password" above with your Google username and password.
Tested-Okay & Satisfaction-Guaranteed

In a bit of a hurry at the moment so no scrot as a proof-of-the-pudding

Cheers!!!