If my mind were a data structure ...

Microsoft has been wonderful till now. My companions throughout the day are WCF services, SQL Databases and C# with the cool JavaScript hanging out with us at times. In the evenings, I find some solace with stimulating discussions and debates about implementing ideas with real people. It is this time that truly rejuvenates me, the whiteboard filling up with several different approaches to a problem, and number of coffee mugs increasing on the table as the time progresses. As I recall the many discussions, it was for one of the applications that we were considering using a hash table with chaining to resolve collisions. The call taken and everyone having approved on it, we decided to discuss the performance aspects the next evening.

The next day I decided to drive to work. It was a solitary drive of 45 kms, the empty road inviting me to push the accelerator a little harder and the radio playing some real good songs. At one song I stopped to listen, pausing my complicated thought process that usually comes to me only when I am on the high road. That song reminded me of my internship days. How I would travel two hours by local transport to get to ISRO, how I would spend my evenings in the ISRO library stacked with the latest books and journals, the light green walls and high ceiling with just the right amount of light, making the environment conducive to read, the long waiting for my Java code to process thousands of records, my 20^th birthday around the same time. I found it intriguing how just one song had brought about so much information, so many memories back to me. The reason was that I used to listen to the same song every morning during my journey to the internship. In its most basic form, I found my mind working like a hash table. In my case the song was the key, however it could be anything, even something as small as a smile, a feather, a toy and all you have to do is iterate through all the memories associated to that key to bring out nostalgia in bouts.

The memories, they are all there in the corner of the mind somewhere, and it needs a certain stimulus to remember them. The bad memories when still fresh in the mind, a stab in the heart every time you remember them, but as time passes by they are buried under the stack of newer and better ones. A dull feeling of sorrow is still associated with them but it will pass and after many years, perhaps the bad memories would also bring a smile on your face reminding you of your naivety.