When the past surprises us

MOST of us have felt it — that fleeting sensation that we’ve lived a moment previously. You walk into a new place but feel you’ve been there. You hear someone speak, and the words feel oddly rehearsed. There are moments when time unfolds in curious ways — when the present feels like a well-worn page in a book you’ve already read. These déjà vu experiences, rare and vivid, have visited me often, leaving behind the same quiet question: how does one explain familiarity without experience?

My first encounter with this strangeness came during college. I had just picked up the guitar. With no formal training, I should’ve stumbled through chords. Yet, one evening in the hostel, my fingers seemed to dance on their own. Tunes I had never learnt flowed smoothly. I wasn’t learning — I was remembering. Friends joked about my “past life” as a musician, but deep down, I wasn’t laughing. It felt too real. It reminded me of Karz — that Rishi Kapoor classic in which music unlocks memories from a past life. I wasn’t solving a murder mystery or chasing revenge, but there was something strangely cinematic about those moments — like I had lived them before, just in another time, another version of me.

Years later, I visited Kochi, a coastal gem in Kerala. Though I had never been there — at least in this life — I wandered the town like a local. I found an old temple without asking for directions, navigated narrow lanes effortlessly, and paused at places that felt oddly sacred, as if I had left a part of myself there once. But it wasn’t always a solitary experience. Once, a close friend and I planned an impromptu trip through South India. While roaming through temple towns and stopping at sleepy tea stalls, we’d often pause mid-conversation and say, “Haven’t we had this chat before?” The joke wore thin after the fourth or fifth time. The sense of repetition was uncanny — same places, same words, same laughter.

One day, I suddenly thought of a long-lost college friend — someone I hadn’t spoken to in over a decade. He wasn’t traceable on social media. But two days later, a message from him popped up on my phone. How he found my number is a different story, but what struck me was the timing. The thought had arrived before the message, as if the mind had sent out a silent ping across space.

Being a physicist and a researcher, I’ve spent years in labs, surrounded by logic and controlled conditions. Yet these odd little overlaps — of time, memory and intuition — keep finding me. Déjà vu, for me, isn’t just a neurological glitch or cognitive echo. It’s a nudge. A signal. A gentle reminder that the borders of experience may be wider than we think.

Most researchers believe déjà vu is a harmless brain phenomenon — a brief misfire in memory processing that makes a new experience feel strangely familiar. Some say it’s a sign of a healthy brain cross-checking its internal database. But even science admits: we don’t fully understand it yet. That lingering mystery is perhaps what makes déjà vu so human — a quiet collision of logic and the unexplainable.