Public buses in Pakistan are an expression of the country's colourful popular culture. Decked up in bedazzled trinkets and talismans, hand-painted bodywork, and pithy Urdu couplets and aphorisms, these distinctive vehicles connect the far ends of the diverse country. Every year, almost 40 million Pakistanis travel on these buses. In many ways, they represent the South Asian nation's life-blood.
In Pakistani musicians Babar Mangi and Amjad Mirani's latest music video 'BUSIN JA DHIKA', these quintessential Pakistani bus journey takes on a new meaning. The musicians use the vehicle as a metaphor for everyday life in Pakistan — of the ups and downs along the way, of theft, poverty, humiliation, compulsion, corruption, injustice, and survival in the face of systemic social apathy.
Written by Mangi and Mirani, directed by Imran Baloch, and shot by cinematographer Muhammad Junaid in Badin, Sindh, the song and the accompanying cinematic music video paints Pakistan as “a land of the deaf”, where the voices of the commons go unheard. It opens with warnings: “do not trust the journey of life, oh my dear (...) never call time your friend, my sweet”, before moving on to highlight how life, like the bus, throws you around with no destination in sight. It takes you in circles — endless and indifferent to your wealth or status. In the end, Hindu, Muslim, believer and non-believer, all are in the same boat, or rather, bus. Unlike those in power who dictate every aspect of others' lives but remain detached from the havoc they wreak, the powerless, the ones inside the bus — united by their collective struggle and hardship — share the same fate.
But it's not all gloom and doom on this seemingly endless, inescapable journey of life. Seamlessly blending the spirit of radical happiness found in South Asian — especially Sindhi — folk music traditions, and the rebellious spirit of rap and hip hop music, the song celebrates the beauty of coexistence, where love is beyond the boundaries of faith or belief. "Every class of traveller sit together in this bus," Mirani sings near the end of the song, "I love everyone. I give love to everyone. I don't hurt anyone' heart." The result is an incredibly catchy and immensely rewatchable music video that is larger than the sum of its parts. The lyrics may be in Sindhi, but like the Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho once said, "once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films," or in this case, music.
Watch the music video here:
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