Dawn Images

Babar Mangi and Amjad Mirani have released the music video for their song ‘Sindhu Waadi’, a tribute to the Indus River, which has formed the basis of life in the Indus Valley for over 5,000 years. The song speaks of the river as an estranged mother to whom the singer is longing to return.

Speaking of returning to a little house in the Indus Valley, the song alludes to how human settlement in Sindh has always been tied to the Indus, saying, “From thousands of years, through thousands of cultures, you are vast, eternal,” calling the river “Mohenjo Daro itself”. The music video carries snippets of village life along the river’s banks, with children playing by mud huts.

The song and its music video also carry a strong political message against the controversial project to draw canals from the Indus River to irrigate the Cholistan Desert. With the lyrics “People have broken your walls. Yet still, you stand. How ancient are you, Sindhu,” the music video shows Mangi and Mirani wandering across a vast desert in search of water, taking shelter in an abandoned canoe; the ground turns to water as we see Mangi quenching his thirst from the river.

Throughout the music video and in the song’s lyrics, the artists’ love for the Indus River is evident, treating it less as a body of water and more as an entity to be revered.

Mangi produced the track himself, while the video was directed by Rahul Aijaz — the director of Pakistan’s first Sindhi film in 28 years, Indus Echoes. Hasnain Samo, a line producer for the song, dedicated it “our Sindhi people and to the river Sindh,” in a post he made in collaboration with Mangi. Social and ecological activist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr is the executive producer for the video.