Everything is now moving fast so communication has to be fast as

Host: The city glowed like a circuit board beneath a rain-heavy sky — streets flashing with neon, screens, and the constant hum of engines. From the 14th floor of a downtown co-working building, the world below looked like an ocean of light, restless and hypnotic. Inside, the air buzzed with the low sound of machines and typing, and the faint hiss of espresso steam from the corner café.

Jack sat by the window, his laptop open, the cold glow of its screen washing over his face. His grey eyes flicked rapidly, tracking messages, updates, replies — hundreds of words typed, none of them felt. Jeeny sat opposite him, her long black hair falling over her shoulders as she sipped slowly from a chipped ceramic mug, her gaze fixed not on her phone, but on him.

Outside, the rain began again — light, relentless, soft as static.

Jeeny: “Javed Akhtar once said, ‘Everything is now moving fast so communication has to be fast as well. But the tragedy is that we have attained this speed at the cost of depth of words.’”

Host: Her voice was calm, but her eyes carried the same sorrow the quote spoke of — a quiet, aching nostalgia for a world where words still had time to mean something.

Jack didn’t look up from his laptop.

Jack: “Depth doesn’t feed anyone anymore, Jeeny. People want quick answers, not poetry. You slow down, you’re left behind.”

Jeeny: “Left behind by what?”

Jack: “By the world. By relevance. You think anyone has time to feel what they read? It’s all about rhythm now — headlines, hashtags, captions. Attention spans last less than a blink.”

Jeeny: “And you’re fine with that?”

Jack: “I’ve adapted. That’s survival.”

Host: She set her mug down slowly, the ceramic touching the wooden desk with a small, deliberate sound. Around them, the office lights reflected off the glass walls, multiplying their silhouettes into a hundred silent witnesses.

Jeeny: “You sound like one of those algorithms you keep defending — fast, precise, but empty inside.”

Jack: “That’s harsh.”

Jeeny: “It’s true. We’ve turned language into noise. We text instead of talk, react instead of reflect. We post words not to connect, but to be seen.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s the evolution of communication. Words aren’t dying; they’re adapting. You can say everything in 280 characters now.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. You can fit everything in 280 characters — but you can’t feel it there.”

Host: The rain hit the window harder now, sliding down in crooked trails. In the distance, a billboard flickered — an advertisement for a new social media app that promised “faster sharing, deeper connections.” The irony wasn’t lost on either of them.

Jack: “You know, people romanticize slowness like it’s some holy relic. But the world’s always been about speed. Steam engines. Telegraphs. Airplanes. The faster we move, the farther we go.”

Jeeny: “Farther from what, though? Or maybe… farther from whom?”

Jack: “You think it’s that dramatic?”

Jeeny: “Yes. I think speed has made us strangers even to ourselves. We say so much and mean so little. You ever notice how we use words like ‘love,’ ‘sorry,’ or ‘hope’ now? Fast, careless, disposable. We’ve traded truth for transmission.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes glistened in the blue light from Jack’s laptop. Outside, the city pulse seemed to echo the rhythm of their conversation — fast, relentless, unfeeling.

Jack: “Maybe meaning’s overrated. Maybe simplicity — clarity — is the new poetry.”

Jeeny: “Clarity isn’t clarity if it’s hollow. When you take away the depth from words, you strip them of their soul. They become symbols, not sentences. You remember when letters used to take weeks to arrive, and people waited to read them? Now, messages come instantly — and we don’t even answer them.”

Jack: “Because we don’t have to. That’s progress, Jeeny.”

Jeeny: “No, that’s isolation. Instant communication has made silence louder.”

Host: Jack looked away, the reflection of the city lights trembling in his eyes. He was silent for a long moment, his hands motionless over the keyboard.

Jack: “You know… my mother used to write me letters when I went off to college. Real letters — ink, paper, smudges from her thumb. I never realized how much they meant until she stopped. Now, I’d give anything to read her handwriting again.”

Jeeny: “What happened?”

Jack: “Email happened. Then texts. And then she got too sick to write. We talked online, but it never felt the same. I can’t remember her words now — just the bubbles on a screen.”

Jeeny: “See? That’s exactly what Akhtar meant. We’ve built faster roads, but they lead nowhere. The tragedy isn’t that we move fast — it’s that we’ve forgotten why we’re moving at all.”

Host: The rain softened, and the faint hum of servers filled the silence, like the breathing of invisible giants. Jack’s laptop went dark as the screen timed out, casting them both into the soft light of the storm.

Jack: “You make it sound like speed killed meaning. But maybe meaning was never meant to last forever.”

Jeeny: “It doesn’t have to last forever. It just has to be felt once — deeply. Even for a moment.”

Jack: “And that moment’s supposed to save us?”

Jeeny: “Maybe not save us. But remind us we’re still human.”

Host: The wind pressed against the glass, the rain’s rhythm turning erratic, alive. Somewhere in the distance, thunder murmured, low and heavy — as if the sky itself was listening to their quiet argument about the soul of modern speech.

Jack: “You know what scares me, Jeeny? That one day, we’ll forget how to talk without devices. How to sit like this — no notifications, no typing — just words that actually breathe.”

Jeeny: “Then don’t let it happen. Talk to someone. Write something real. A letter, maybe. A line that costs you time.”

Jack: “Time — the one thing no one gives anymore.”

Jeeny: “That’s why it matters when you do.”

Host: She smiled then — soft, unhurried. Jack looked at her, really looked, and for the first time that night, he closed his laptop. The light vanished from his face, replaced by the flicker of the city’s reflection and the quiet, living warmth of another human presence.

Jack: “You know, I used to love words. I’d write poems when I was a kid. Clumsy, sentimental ones. But I stopped — life got too fast.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time to write again.”

Jack: “You think people still care about poetry?”

Jeeny: “Of course. They always will. Even if they pretend otherwise. Deep down, everyone’s waiting for a word that feels like being understood.”

Host: Outside, the rain slowed to a whisper, the kind that lingers on the edge of dawn. The city’s lights flickered once more, reflected in the window like constellations in a human-made sky.

Jeeny reached for a napkin and slid it toward him. “Write something,” she said.

Jack stared at it for a long while, then smiled — a small, uncertain smile — and picked up a pen.

The ink spread slowly across the napkin, uneven and imperfect, but real.

Host: The clock struck midnight. The rain stopped completely. Outside, the world raced on — taxis, emails, updates, headlines — a thousand tiny signals crossing paths at the speed of thought.

But inside that glass room, two people sat still, exchanging something slower, older, almost forgotten: the silence between words that gives them meaning.

And for that fleeting, fragile moment, depth returned — not through eloquence, but through presence.

Because sometimes, the truest word is not the one that moves fastest,
but the one that waits to be heard.