The Veil

Ever read something, or watched a movie or a show, and felt, for a bit, that the author had seen through the veil? Not in a mystical, incense-and-incantations way. More like they had brushed against the scaffolding beneath reality and then quietly put the curtain back in place. You walk out with a strange mix of excitement and unease. Excitement because something resonated. Unease because you can’t quite articulate what did.

I’ve had that experience more times than I can count. The latest was when I watched Tron: Ares in IMAX a few months ago. The movie itself is not the point. It rarely is. What stayed with me was the feeling that someone on the other side of the screen had been thinking along a similar path; about reality, perception, and the uncomfortable idea that what we experience as “solid” may be anything but. I remember walking out of the theatre with Meghna, trying (and mostly failing) to explain quantum physics in human language. About wavelengths. About probability. About how reality, at a fundamental level, behaves less like a brick wall and more like a trembling field of possibilities. Waveforms everywhere. She listened patiently, as she always does, while I gestured vaguely at the air, trying to draw waveforms with my hands. And somewhere in that conversation, another thought quietly surfaced.

How does someone do that? How does a writer or filmmaker embed an idea so deeply that 98% of the audience walks away with a “wow” moment, while the remaining 2% feel like they’ve just been winked at? As if the creator briefly locked eyes with them across the noise and said, You see it too, don’t you? That, I think, is a rare skill. Storytelling is hard. To narrate a coherent story, to keep characters alive, tension believable, and pacing intact; is difficult. But to layer a second, almost invisible narrative beneath it? One that doesn’t announce itself. One that doesn’t lecture or explain. One that never disrupts the experience for those who aren’t looking for it? That feels like something else entirely. Almost like encryption. The surface story is the message anyone can read. The hidden narrative is readable only if you possess the key; not because the creator is excluding others, but because they trust the audience enough to not over-explain. The idea doesn’t shout. It whispers. And whispers, I’ve noticed, carry farther than shouts.

When I think back to the works that affected me most, they all had this quality. They didn’t try to convince me of anything. They simply laid out a path and let me walk it at my own pace. Somewhere along the way, I’d realise that the path had subtly shifted my footing. That realisation is deeply personal. Two people can consume the same work and walk away with entirely different experiences, both valid. One might be impressed by the visuals. Another by the music. A third by the plot. And a very small fraction walk away unsettled, not because something scared them, but because something clicked. That click is not an accident. It comes from restraint.

The temptation to explain is enormous, I guess especially when you think you’ve understood something important. But explanation often flattens wonder. When everything is spelled out, nothing is left to discover. The audience is nothing more than a passive recipient instead of an active participant. The creators I admire most seem to resist that temptation. They leave gaps. They leave silence. They leave room for misinterpretation. And paradoxically, that makes the idea stronger, not weaker.

Quantum physics, for example, is a nightmare to explain directly. The moment you translate it into everyday language, it starts to sound either mystical or nonsensical. Waves that are particles. Particles that are probabilities. Observation changing outcomes. Any straightforward explanation either oversimplifies or overwhelms. But hint at it? Suggest it through metaphor, light, rhythm, repetition? Suddenly it becomes accessible—not intellectually, but intuitively. You don’t understand it. You feel it. And maybe that’s the point.

The 2% aren’t smarter. They’re tuned to a certain frequency. They’ve been circling the same questions, reading similar things, bumping into the same conceptual walls. When a creator encodes an idea at that frequency, it resonates. Not because it’s clearer, but because it aligns. This realisation has been unsettling in a good way. Because it makes me wonder whether this is a skill one can develop, or if it’s something you either have or you don’t. It’s for sure not magic. Maybe practice, patience, humility mixed together ?  Humility to accept that most people won’t notice what you’ve hidden. Patience to sit with an idea long enough that it stops needing to be explained. Practice in saying less, not more.

As someone who writes, I know my default mode is exposition. If I’ve struggled to understand something, my instinct is to logically present how I reach a conclusion. Maybe I over-clarify, to make sure no one misses the point. But maybe that instinct is precisely what I need to unlearn. Perhaps the real craft lies in trusting the reader. Trusting that those who are meant to find the hidden thread will do so. Trusting that ambiguity is not confusion. Trusting that meaning doesn’t have to be universally accessible to be meaningful.

There’s also a more uncomfortable thought here. What if the act of aiming for the 2% isn’t about exclusivity at all, but about honesty? About writing what I genuinely see, without sanding it down for mass comfort. If 98% don’t notice, that’s fine. They still get a story. They still get something enjoyable, moving, or entertaining. But for the few who are wrestling with the same questions about reality, perception, identity, consciousness; maybe the work becomes a companion rather than a product.

I don’t know yet if I can develop that skill. I suspect the answer lies less in technique and more in attention. In reading deeply. In watching carefully. In thinking slowly. In allowing myself to not resolve every question immediately. Maybe the hidden narration emerges naturally when one stops trying to be clever.

For now, I remain a student, watching, reading, writing, and occasionally walking out of a theatre, talking about wavelengths and probability, aware that somewhere, someone else is doing the same. Maybe some veils get lifted.

C