I count it among the quiet privileges of my life that I live in Cyberabad, that curious frontier of Hyderabad where glass and code rise together, and where the pulse of the contemporary world beats with an almost inaudible insistence. Yet, even here, amid the measured rhythm of machines and meetings, there comes a moment when the mind turns restless in its own enclosure—when the walls of one’s study, however familiar, begin to feel like a narrowing horizon.

It is then that I step out, not so much in search of diversion as in search of renewal, and find myself drawn, almost instinctively, to institutions—those living spaces where thought gathers, where ideas are not merely spoken but shaped, contested, and, in their quieter moments, allowed to become the future. These visits unfold as small, inward journeys—intellectual pilgrimages, if one may call them so—where the act of arriving is itself a kind of reflection.  

Of all such places, the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad has, over time, become a point of gentle return. There is, upon entering its campus, a peculiar stillness—not an absence of activity, but a presence of thought. The corridors seem to hold a subdued resonance, as though they remember conversations not yet concluded, and discoveries not yet made. One walks through them with a certain attentiveness, sensing that beneath the visible order of classrooms and laboratories there moves an undercurrent of inquiry, of possibility, of futures quietly assembling themselves out of the discipline of the present.

During a recent visit, I found myself lingering through an entire forenoon with Vineet Gandhi, who leads the Centre for Visual Information Technology. Conversations with researchers have a cadence of their own—they seldom declare their destination at the outset. The meeting, arranged at the behest of Deepti Gaddam, Managing Director of Ozone Hospitals and a successful technology curator, began almost ceremonially with introductions. Then, as if yielding to a deeper current, it unfolded through stories of journeys and ideas. What is termed ‘incubation’ in computer science revealed itself, in that room, as something more intimate—a quiet humanisation of technology.  

Vineet’s own journey seems to trace the quiet arc of a new generation of global Indian scientists. Born in Pipar City (पीपाड़), a small town in Jodhpur district, and schooled in Ajmer, he carries within him that early geography of modest beginnings, which so often widens, rather than limits, one’s horizon. From there, he moved to the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur, graduating in 2009, and soon after, as if answering a larger summons, left for Europe on the prestigious Erasmus Mundus programme. 

Within the CIMET consortium—Colour in Informatics and Media Technology—Vineet’s education unfolded across intellectual and geographical landscapes, weaving together disciplines and cultures into a single, evolving inquiry. His master’s programme unfolded as a passage across borders—one semester in Spain, another in Norway—each landscape offering not merely a change of place but a shift in intellectual temperament. By the time he arrived at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology in France to complete his thesis, the journey had already begun to assume the quality of a quiet synthesis. It was there that he remained to pursue his doctoral work in applied mathematics and computer science under Rémi Ronfard, a pioneer in the intriguing field of Computer Theatre—where storytelling does not merely borrow from computation, but is reshaped by it, finding new grammars of expression at their intersection.

 In 2015, Vineet returned to India, as though completing a wide arc, and joined the International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad as a Senior Research Scientist. Over the years, he has grown into a steady and thoughtful presence within its research community, and today, as an Associate Professor, he contributes to its vibrant ecosystem in visual computing and artificial intelligence. Alongside his academic work, he serves as Chief Scientific Advisor at Animaker Inc., where his insights flow outwards—translating the abstractions of computer vision into tools creators across the world use, often without pausing to consider the science that enables them.

This dual inhabitation—one foot anchored in the reflective quiet of academia, the other stepping into the restless terrain of real-world innovation—suggests a new form of scholarship. The researcher is no longer confined to the slow, solitary afterlife of published papers; knowledge now seeks embodiment, moving outwards into platforms and products that subtly reshape how the world sees, tells, and remembers its stories.  

Listening to Vineet in person, whom I had previously knownonly through the media, I became aware—almost with a certain humility—of how little I truly understand of media technology. My relationship with cinema has largely been that of a spectator, one who receives images as they appear, without perceiving the intricate and invisible machinery that gives them form. And yet, in that moment, it seemed that behind every frame there lay not only technique, but an entire architecture of thought—patient, precise, and quietly transformative.

For me, digital media long remained a distant, almost mythical realm beyond engineering. Steve Jobs changed that perception—building Pixar into a pioneer of digital storytelling, and later reshaping not only music, but also how it was produced, distributed, and valued through the iPod and iTunes. In doing so, he showed how computation, creativity and narrative could converge to redefine entire creative industries.

 Today, as we watch television or scroll through digital media, certainty itself seems to waver: is what we see real or fabricated, truth or simulation, human-made or machine-generated? These questions have stayed with me as I work on The Mirror and the Maze, my new book about a post-truth world—an environment in which objective facts recede, and perception is shaped more by emotion, belief and repeated narratives than by verifiable reality. Technology has given us the power to simulate reality—but with it comes a deeper philosophical unease about what reality now means.

Yet this uncertainty did not arrive overnight. The modern world has already lived through a quiet cognitive revolution—brought about not by books, but by cinema. While books, for centuries, remained the preserve of the literate and even within that, a reflective minority, films crossed those boundaries with ease. They spoke in images, emotions, and archetypes, reaching millions simultaneously, imprinting ideas with a force that text alone rarely achieves. Cinema did not merely entertain; it reshaped perception itself, training societies to see, feel and believe through narrative.

At the heart of every memorable film lies a story—an emotional thread that binds image to meaning and moment to memory. Films like Mayabazar and Mother India have shaped a civilisation’s sense of heroism and duty, while The Godfather and The Wolf of Wall Street expose the darker undercurrents of power. Even the recent Dhurandhar reflects the anxieties of nationhood, where visible narratives meet unseen forces.

And yet, beneath these varied expressions, something remains unchanged. Technology may refine the instruments of storytelling, but the human hunger for stories is insatiable, for we continue to seek the meaning of our own existence. What gives a film its life is not the apparatus, but the story it carries—a quiet bridge between what we see and what we feel. A great film is one in which the audience finds something of themselves.

My conversation with Vineet Gandhi unfolded in his modest chamber, suffused with the unmistakable stillness of a scholar’s workspace. On one wall stood a large, old-fashioned green board rather than the whiteboards in vogue today. He uses dust-free chalk sticks imported from Japan. “A couple of sticks last an entire semester”, he said, almost as an aside, with a gentle smile.

Before I left, he placed a few of those chalk sticks in my hand as a parting gift, thanking me for coming—small objects, yet curiously weighty in their suggestion. They seemed to remind me that, for all the sophistication of artificial intelligence and digital media, learning still begins in simplicity: a teacher, a board, and an idea slowly taking shape through the movement of a hand.