Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has

Host: The night breathed through the half-open windows of a small studio tucked above a neon-lit street in Mumbai. The city below was alive — horns, voices, vendors, and motorcycles — all weaving into a single restless rhythm. Inside, the air smelled of tobacco, dust, and faint jasmine — a strange marriage of art and time.

A broken fan spun lazily, its blades groaning with each turn. On the floor, surrounded by tangled cables and instruments, sat Jack — a composer, his grey eyes half-closed, listening to an unfinished track on his old headphones. The beat was sharp, modern, synthetic.

Across the room, Jeeny stood by the window, the moonlight touching her hair. She was holding a vinyl record — an old Lata Mangeshkar song — the cover cracked, but still beautiful.

Jeeny: “You know what Gulzar said?” she murmured, almost to herself. “Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has changed, clothes have changed, food habits have changed, so why should music remain the same?”

Host: Her voice hung in the air, soft yet filled with conviction, like the final note of a fading melody.

Jack pulled off his headphones, his expression a mixture of fatigue and irony.

Jack: “He’s right. But that doesn’t mean all change is progress, Jeeny. Just because something’s new, doesn’t mean it’s better. We’ve traded soul for speed. We don’t listen anymore — we just consume.”

Jeeny: “You sound like an old guru who hates electric guitars.”

Jack: “Maybe I do. But think about it — the old songs had depth, pain, space. Now it’s all hooks, loops, and auto-tune. The machines sing louder than the hearts that built them.”

Host: Jeeny turned, her eyes gleaming beneath the moonlight. She walked toward him, the vinyl still in her hand, her steps as measured as her words.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s because the world itself has changed. The pace, the pressure, the pulse — everything’s faster. Music is just mirroring the times. You think the generation scrolling through their lives at light speed will wait for a four-minute ghazal?”

Jack: “Maybe they should. Maybe that’s the problem. Music was never meant to chase time. It was meant to pause it.”

Jeeny: “That’s beautiful, Jack. But it’s also nostalgic — and nostalgia can be a prison. Every generation thinks its art was purer. Remember when jazz was called the devil’s music? When Bob Dylan got booed for plugging in his guitar? Change always offends the old gods.”

Host: A silence settled, thick with tension and truth. Outside, a street performer’s flute rose faintly, haunting, ancient — cutting through the pulse of a distant bass line from a passing car.

Jack: “You’re comparing the revolutionary to the commercial, Jeeny. Dylan was changing language, not tempo. What we have now is noise — factory-made emotion. The industry has replaced artistry. Everything’s algorithmic.”

Jeeny: “But even algorithms are made by humans, Jack. Every beat you despise — someone felt it, coded it, lived it. You think the youth don’t have pain? Their pain just sounds different now. It’s in the bass drop, the repetition, the chaos. That is their ghazal.”

Jack: “You can’t tell me a three-line trap song equals ‘Ae Dil-e-Nadaan’. One’s a poem, the other’s a tweet.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s exactly it — a tweet is their haiku. You can’t measure meaning by length, Jack. Every era finds its own voice, even if it whispers differently.”

Host: Jack stood, his tall frame casting a long shadow against the wall. His eyes were storm-grey, his voice low but burning.

Jack: “Then tell me, Jeeny — if time demands change, where does truth go? What happens when art becomes fashion? When songs expire faster than milk? What are we left with?”

Jeeny: “We’re left with motion, Jack. With momentum. With connection. Maybe truth isn’t in lasting — maybe it’s in feeling. A song that lasts three weeks but makes a million hearts dance still matters. You just don’t like that the shelf life of beauty got shorter.”

Host: The city lights flickered across their faces, a mosaic of blue and gold. The sound of rain began to tremble against the roof, steady and rhythmic — like percussion from another world.

Jack: “You’re defending a culture that doesn’t even listen to full songs anymore. They skip, they shuffle, they sample. The attention span of a heartbeat. Music has become disposable, and so have its feelings.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe music has become democratic. Everyone has a voice now. You don’t need a record label, a studio, or a producer. Just a laptop and a dream. Isn’t that what music was always supposed to be? Freedom?”

Jack: “Freedom is a beautiful word. But it’s also an excuse. Too much of it and chaos takes the throne.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe chaos is the new melody, Jack. Maybe Gulzar was right — time will change, and with it, music will too. He didn’t mourn it — he celebrated it. You’re the one trying to hold the river still.”

Host: Jack sighed, pacing near the mixing console, the lights of the equalizer dancing in green waves across his face.

Jack: “You talk about rivers — but even rivers need banks, Jeeny. Without form, without discipline, music just spills. It floods everything. It stops being art and becomes noise.”

Jeeny: “And yet, every flood makes new soil fertile. That’s what time does. It washes, it reshapes. The sitar was once new. So was the microphone. Someone like you probably said they’d kill the purity of music. But they didn’t. They expanded it.”

Host: The rain had grown, sheets of water drumming against the roof. The sound filled the room, drowning even their breath for a moment. Jeeny smiled, reaching for the old record player on the shelf. She set the Lata vinyl, the needle crackling to life.

The melody was slow, aching, timeless. It wrapped the room in memory. Then, from Jack’s computer, a second track began — electronic, pulsing, urgent.

The two songs — one from the past, one from the present — collided in the air. And strangely, they worked.

Host: Jack looked up, startled, then smiled, faintly. It was as if the centuries were speaking to each other, bridging the silence between eras.

Jeeny: “See?” she whispered, over the music. “Old and new don’t have to fight. They can dance.”

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the mistake isn’t that music’s changed. Maybe it’s that I stopped changing with it.”

Jeeny: “That’s what Gulzar meant. Music doesn’t age, Jack — it just moves. Like time, like us.”

Host: The rain began to ease, the city’s heartbeat softening beneath it. The room was bathed in silver light, and the two songs — the ancient and the electric — faded into one breathing silence.

Jack closed his eyes, his fingers tapping the table, finding a rhythm between memory and moment. Jeeny watched, her smile small but bright, her eyes filled with quiet music.

Host: And as the night folded around them, the truth of Gulzar’s words settled in the air — that time, like music, is not meant to be preserved, but lived.

For in the end, every melody is just a mirror of its moment — fleeting, fragile, but forever true.