Vijay Varma: Heroes of the future would be geeks

Mumbai, March 27  Gone are the days of emperors, warriors and business magnates. Geeks would be the heroes in future, feels actor Vijay Varma.

“It’s the age of the geeks, so we’ve imagined that the heroes of the future would be geeks. Earlier warriors, kings, big businessmen, sportsmen — they were the heroes. But the heroes of the future would be people who are intelligent and studious and excelling in their field of academics, because the future is technology,” Vijay told IANS.

Referring to his character Saajan Kundu in the new sci-fi comedy web series “OK Computer”, he added: “We created a hero who is a geek and looks exactly like someone who has passed from IIT. There is also a sarkari babu kind of feel to it because he is working for the government. My character Saajan Kundu is a cyber cell police officer. In future, there will be a lot more crimes virtually and digitally by the AI (artifical intelligence), this is what is being predicted. In a space of science fiction and comedy this person is trying to be very serious about what he’s doing and that’s where the humour lies.”

Quizzed if he is tech savvy in real life, the actor replied: “I am an avid gamer, I love PlayStation. I really like to go ahead and learn new technology.”

The Disney+ Hotstar sci-fi comedy series talks about the future where Artificial Intelligence has a strong presence in human lives. Can technology overpower humans in future? “Right now humans are making technology that enables them to perform their tasks easily, and the consciousness of AI is at a nascent stage. If it grows to a level of consciousness that can threaten us, then it will be a problem, and I think that can happen. For now we are safe but you never know! We did not anticipate the rapid increase in fake news 5-10 years ago, we didn’t see it coming. So we never know!” the actor replied.

Vijay shares the screen with Jackie Shroff in the web series. Talking about the experience of working with the veteran actor, he said: “I’m pretty vocal about my love for Jacky dada. We have such killer scenes together! It feels great to be able to share screen time with him and chat on the sets. He is one of those hero figures you have, he is a personality and has got his wit and charm. Just to see him, work with him and learn from him was a delight.”

Memes featuring Vijay from the series are doing the rounds on social media. He himself shared a few recently.

Reacting to the same, the actor laughed heartily: “Oh! I embrace them! I’m like, can we have more of these?”