India’s Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon on Building ‘Maya,’ Their New Mythology for the Digital Age: ‘Every Hero Is Someone Else’s Villain’

Four years ago, filmmaker Anand Gandhi and game designer Zain Memon asked themselves a simple question: “What is worth dedicating the rest of our lives to?” Their answer became “Maya,” a sprawling transmedia universe that has launched with its first novel — “Maya: Seed Takes Root” — and has ambitions far beyond entertainment.

The project is built around a core philosophy: “Whoever controls the stories, controls our dreams and nightmares, our very desires and fears. Their whispers become our will.”

It’s a philosophy that drives “Maya,” described as “the story we didn’t know we were already living.” Set on planet Neh, the narrative centers on a biological network of sentient trees that functions as a living internet. Citizens “tether” daily to this network, entering shared dreamscapes for work and play, while immortal beings called the Divyas harvest the data to predict billions of possible futures.

The Divyas don’t rule through force. As the creators explain it: Why issue commands when you can shape desires?

The premise feels uncomfortably close to our current relationship with technology and social media algorithms — and that’s entirely the point.

“In the early drafts of civilization’s codes, the people with big sticks made the big decisions,” the duo say. “The stick kept changing with the times — sword, coin, title — until it disappeared from sight altogether. The biggest achievement of systemic control in the 21st century is its invisibility.”

“Maya” deliberately avoids the traditional good-versus-evil narrative structure that dominates most franchise storytelling. There are no clear heroes or villains, only systems in conflict.

“‘Maya’ isn’t about heroes vs. villains,” explains Memon, whose previous games include “Shasn” and “Azadi.” “It’s about the defining conflicts of our civilization today: truth vs. dogma, innovation vs. stagnation, freedom vs. control, and haves vs. have-nots.”

For Gandhi — the filmmaker behind Toronto, Tokyo and Rotterdam selection “Ship of Theseus” and Venice Critics’ Week opener “Tumbbad” — this represents an evolution from his previous work. While those films explored philosophical questions through cinema, “with ‘Maya,’ the inquiry is distributed,” he says. “It lives across books, games, myths, and interactive systems.”

“What we’re attempting with ‘Maya’ is a kind of civilizational storytelling where each fragment, each format, participates in a larger philosophical argument,” he says. “It’s not about one protagonist’s journey to achieve enlightenment. It’s about a world wrestling with inequity, autonomy and disparate ways of seeing.”

The challenge, Gandhi admits, was “keeping the narrative engaging without relying on moral binaries. But it was never really a challenge — that was the point. The real tension doesn’t come from good versus evil. It comes from incompatible systems that are internally coherent but externally irreconcilable.”

The pair spent four years developing “Maya” through their company Department of Lore, working with evolutionary biologists, linguists, architects, philosophers and system theorists. The collaboration wasn’t just for authenticity — it was fundamental to their world-building philosophy.

“We take inspiration from a famous Carl Sagan question: ‘How do you make an apple pie from scratch?’” the creators explain. “You need apples. But where do apples come from? It’s an infinite regress, until you realize: to truly make an apple pie from scratch, you must first build a universe.”

Memon’s background in systems thinking shaped the approach. “Every species, technology, mythology and ideology in ‘Maya’ is built from first principles,” he says. “The question is never ‘what looks cool?’ or ‘what would be fun?’ The question is: given a specific environment, set of constraints and evolutionary trajectory, what culture would emerge?”

This methodical approach means conflicts arise organically from the world’s internal logic rather than plot necessity. “When you build from structure rather than surface, the world resists easy answers,” Memon notes. “Every faction believes it is right. Every hero is someone else’s villain.”

The creators position “Maya” as more than entertainment — they call it a “cognitive toolkit” for navigating our algorithmic age.

“When you follow characters navigating a world where attention is currency, you’re intuitively learning about data ownership,” they explain. “When you witness data-gods choosing between futures as if it’s an exact science, you’re learning about prediction algorithms.”

The goal is for audiences to recognize these patterns in their own lives, questioning “who profits from their anxiety” and “asking sharper questions about the futures we’re building.”

Resistance in “Maya’s” world doesn’t look like traditional rebellion. “It’s far quieter and far harder,” Gandhi says. “It’s the act of noticing. When your preferences, fears, and memories are shaped by invisible systems, resistance begins with seeing the architecture of how minds are shaped.”

“In ‘Maya,’ resistance is not a spectacle. It’s discernment. The slow, deliberate work of remembering how to choose,” Gandhi adds.

“Maya” has launched with the novel “Maya: Seed Takes Root” and the creators have mapped out a 15-year plan across multiple media. They’ve already begun developing films, games, graphic novels and immersive experiences, with collaborators from six continents contributing to the world’s expansion.

“There’s no endgame because the questions ‘Maya’ explores don’t have endpoints — they have iterations,” they say.

More ambitiously, they want “Maya” to become “a sandbox for creators” — inviting other storytellers, game designers, and artists to build within their universe and become stakeholders in its mythology.

It’s a significant gamble for creators who could easily continue making individual films and games. But for Gandhi and Memon, the stakes feel existential.

“Today, algorithmic nudges can cascade into changing beliefs, personalized feeds can diverge from shared realities, and targeted influence can make you grateful for your manipulation,” the duo say. “We’re already living in a world where every craving, every fear can be quietly sparked from afar.”

Whether “Maya” succeeds as both art and business remains to be seen. But in an entertainment landscape increasingly dominated by algorithm-driven content, it represents something rarer: a deliberate attempt to help audiences think more clearly about the very systems shaping their consumption.

As Memon puts it: “‘Maya’ is a warning, a hope, and a mirror. But it’s also a blueprint for the future we seek to build, and a roadmap to guide our path.”