Adil Najam’s Video: Ghar Tou Akhir Apna Hai

Adil Najam

All Things Pakistan was launched with a remix video I had made back in 2006, based on Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum DaikhaiN Gay, as  – in some ways ATP was launched because of that video. More than four years and more than three hundred thousand views later (on YouTube) that video still seems to be relevant, and this blog keeps going on.

I had not remixed another video since then. Until now. (Or view at YouTube).

This one is not quite as sweeping a political commentary as the first video. But I hope that it is relevant – on Pakistan’s Great Flood of 2010 – and maybe the song and words in the background will also move you in the same way that they always move me.

That the song was itself written as a response to a similar tragedy some 30 years ago makes it even more relevant today, and tragically so. All I would add about the song – sung by Shahnaz Begum (written by Asad Mohammad Khan; I think the music is by Sohail Rana but have not been able to confirm that) – is that I have always loved it (see this post from four years ago) because it takes a refreshingly real view of why we love our country: because it is our home. That is all we need to know. That is all that matters.

In this video, as on the first one, I was moved by the song and how relevant it was to the many thoughts going on in my own head at the time. In this case, those thoughts have been about the floods, but also about our own attitudes of depression and despondency around those floods and everything else happening around us. This song is a response to these attitudes. And so are the words of Mr. Jinnah that I use in the background to the song.

Let me let the song, and the words of Mr. Jinnah, speak for themselves.