By Krish Gupta (BMS’27)

It was an ordinary, unceremonious morning when it happened. The sun rose, the alarms rang, and the world blinked itself awake. But when people opened their mouths to greet, complain, shout, or sing, nothing came out. Not a whisper, not a sound, not even the faintest hum. The air was still, as if the planet itself pressed mute switch.

At first, it was chaos. News anchors sat frozen before their cameras, lips moving uselessly. Call centers are silent with unanswered complaints. People screamed silently on video calls, typing messages like “Can you hear me?” over and over again. Governments issued statements that no one could read, because everyone was too busy trying to make their speeches work.

By lunchtime, the whole world had gone quiet. Think about it: from busy spots like Delhi and New York to tiny islands and empty train stations, no one was talking. Sure, animals were still making noise, the wind was still whipping, and the ocean was still doing its thing, but humans just couldn’t speak anymore. It wasn’t that they couldn’t hear; they could still pick up all the sounds around them, just not their own voices.

They tried to fill the silence with memories of sound. They opened old recordings, played songs on their phones, scrolled through YouTube hoping to hear laughter, speeches, the familiar voices. But the voices were gone there too. In movies, only the background noises remained. In interviews, only the rustle of clothes and the hum of air. It was as if the world had edited out its own language, ‘leaving behind the echoes of everything except itself’.

For a while, fear ruled. Parents clutched children, lovers tried to listen to each other through panicked gestures, and soldiers waited for orders that would never be spoken. But by night, the terror began to fade into something stranger, ‘Peace’. Without speech, there was no shouting, no arguing, no slogans, no hurried lies to fill the air. Just breath, and the rhythmic pulse of existence.

The next day, people tried to adapt. Phones lit up with frantic texts and screens overflowed with words trying to fill the null. But it was exhausting. Every sentence felt clunky and robotic, completely lacking any warmth or natural flow. Slowly, even typing began to fade. There was no point writing endless thoughts that couldn’t truly be heard. A new kind of silence took over, something everyone just understood, even without trying.

At first, talking was tough. People on the streets really went all out with gestures – pointing, waving, and miming like crazy. But pretty soon, they started really watching each other. Eyes showed more feeling, and hands moved way more gently. Without words, folks actually listened to what others weren’t saying. For the first time in ages, what people said was incredibly honest. Arguments vanished, not because everyone agreed, but because no one had the energy to fight. The mind had to slow down before the hands could speak. Thoughts that once spilled recklessly had to be shaped with patience. Even anger lost its flavor when it couldn’t be shouted.

A mother in Mumbai, who had spent years scolding her children to finish breakfast, simply sat with them that morning. No yelling, no “hurry up”. They ate quietly, together. When they finished, her youngest looked up, smiled and hugged her, something he hadn’t done in months.

A couple in Paris, always fighting over small and grand things, sat facing each other in silence. He gestured “sorry” with his eyes; she nodded, tears rolling without words. They realized that speech have been both their bridge and their wall. Now, without it, only truth remains.

Somewhere in Tokyo, a street musician played his guitar outside a station. No one asked for songs, but dozens stopped and listened. For once, the music didn’t compete with conversation, it filled the space left behind by our tongue. Even the city’s chaos began to sound different, as if the world had tuned itself to a lower, gentler frequency with low bass.

A week passed, and the silence began to teach. People rediscovered gestures that had been buried: nods, touches, glances, half-smiles. The elderly who had always spoken less became teachers of patience. Children, usually restless, adapted fast. They started inventing games played only through movement, laughter expressed through twinkling eyes. For them, silence was not absence but play.

Religious places, once vibrant and busy with prayers and chants, became incredibly quiet. People came not to hear but to feel. Without words, prayer turned inward, and faith stopped competing for the loudest hymn. Even politics, once the theatre of shouting, encountered into silence. With no speeches, leaders could no longer charm crowds & only their actions remained visible. For a brief moment, truth is breathing freely.

But humanity, restless as ever, began to wonder if silence was permanent. Scientists filled laboratories, fingers moving furiously over notepads, analyzing the physiology of speech. They found no illness, no virus, no mechanical fault. The human voice box was perfect but it simply refused to act. It was as if the collective consciousness of mankind had chosen quiet.

Months turned into a slow rhythm of peace. The world, once drowning in words, started to heal. Cities became gentler, nights quieter. People began to sleep earlier. The air cleared, not just from pollution, but from the static of constant talking. When no one could shout, listening became hallowed. Yet there were some who missed their voices terribly. Poets, singers & lovers who once whispered promises. They longed for the warmth of spoken emotion. A man who had always sung to his wife now played her favorite tune on an old harmonium. She understood that the melody said everything.

Then came the phase when the silence itself began to tremble, not with sound, but with possibility. The wind moved differently, as if carrying a question. People looked at each another, wondering if the stillness had run its course. A few people tried to speak, moving their lips out of habit, but nothing came. The air stayed quiet, heavy with meaning.

It was as if the world was holding its breath, deciding whether to return what it had once taken away. The sky seemed to listen. The oceans waited. Humanity was in a tough spot, caught between what it feared and what it really wanted. It longed to speak up again but was also nervous about what might happen if it did. Everyone was totally silent, holding their breath. No one even dared to make a sound. Deep down, they knew this quiet was what saved them from themselves. That in its emptiness, it had given them everything they had lost i.e. patience, peace, presence.

As time went on, people started to feel a lot of things they couldn’t express. Lovers wished they could say names out loud, parents wanted to call out to their kids, and poets really wanted to vocalize their deep thoughts. The quiet was a mixed bag, sometimes comforting, sometimes a real punishment, a big lesson, but also super confining.

The world just seems to stop, stuck between wanting to say something and not wanting to break the peaceful quiet.

One morning, IF VOICES EVER RETURN, will humanity know how to use them or will it lose the silence forever?