Vanshika Rathore
Lawyer, Filmmaker and Seeker
Vanshika Rathore is a lawyer by day, and a hula-hooping, dog-ear-cleaning, memory-chasing artist at heart. She films what she can’t put into words and writes what she can’t say out loud. Theatre raised her, cooking calms her, and through short films, she says, “It’s just another way I’m trying to meet myself again.”

Challenges
10
Manomukti
For this challenge, we had invited the fellows to bring their final projects to life through the powerful mediums of either a short film or a graphic novel. Vanshika’s film is a haunting, emotional sci-fi drama about control, family, and the cost of erasing what makes us human. In a near-future India, where forgetting is a service you can buy, one woman begins to remember. As a powerful neuro-tech company promises freedom from pain, a quiet resistance grows—led by memory, dreams, and the aching question: what if our sorrow is sacred?
9
For this challenge, we had invited the fellows to bring their final projects to life through the powerful mediums of either a short film or a graphic novel. Vanshika’s film is a haunting, emotional sci-fi drama about control, family, and the cost of erasing what makes us human. In a near-future India, where forgetting is a service you can buy, one woman begins to remember. As a powerful neuro-tech company promises freedom from pain, a quiet resistance grows—led by memory, dreams, and the aching question: what if our sorrow is sacred?
8
Challenge 8 was a fun exercise in which the fellows generated interactive AI personas using the Gooey.AI copilot tool. Vanshika’s bot Ishani Vohra, is the daughter of Cognitech’s powerful CEO and partner. She was an heiress who had turned into a quiet rebel. Her memory-like dreams after her brother Arjun’s death awaken long-buried truths and a thirst for justice.
7
After an engaging workshop with Nina Sabnani, the fellows applied their imagination to craft a narrative using five images that Nina gave as prompts. Vanshika’s story Love and Legacy presents a village uprooted by progress. A young Sakhi learns the cost of survival as her beloved dog is given away—revealing how love and legacy are the first to be sacrificed.
6
For this challenge, we wanted the fellows to create supporting characters that would inhabit their envisioned future world. Vanshika created the characters of Ishwar and Arjun.Ishwar, a charismatic and calculating leader, rose to power with Cognitech's promise of memory control for global peace, but the mysterious death of his son Arjun and his growing obsession with control have strained his family and clouded his moral judgment.



5

Fellows developed characters who would live in their imagined future worlds. Vanshika created the character of Ishani, an intelligent, courageous, and deeply driven lawyer, who is also grappling with a growing sense of disillusionment. Once fiercely loyal to her father and Cognitech, she has started questioning everything after experiencing vivid dreams that feel more like repressed memories.
4
For this challenge, we wanted fellows to continue building on their explored futures, focusing on world building. We wanted them to visualise it as the opening scene of a sci-fi film, where the focus is on the setting rather than the characters. 5 to 6 frames were created using Gooey's Animation Generator in draft mode (2 FPS). Vanshika has presented a wide-angle shot of a bustling Indian marketplace at midday, with vendors selling traditional goods and pedestrians in colorful attire.
3
For this challenge, we had asked the fellows to illustrate their peers’ predictions for the future. Vanshika illustrated the futuristic prediction that climate refugees find safety and community in modular, AI-adaptive homes that move with them and self-adjust for heat and floods.


2
We asked the fellows to explore what the future would look like. We also asked them to forecast a series of predictions for the next few years, with a timeline of no more than 25 years ahead. Vanshika made the following predictions about the future. We will have entered an AI cold war/AI arms race. Countries like America and China will be more influential in shaping global politics being more adept technologically. Economically weaker nations will lag behind in the AI race and will heavily depend on others. The idea of territorial sovereignty will vanish and instead we will enter digital diplomacy, Trans border, multilevel governance of AI, big data era. Trans-border cybercrimes and domestic cybercrimes in India will increase tenfold. No way to tell what’s deep fake and what’s not. State sponsored hackers will use sensitive data and amplify system vulnerabilities. India will create robust regulations to control cybercrime rates. Debates around ethical use of AI, surveillance of personal data and invasion of privacy.