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Independence is something for all Pakistanis to celebrate, but for many whose families had to flee their homes in India, the celebrations are often bittersweet. Adnan Siddiqui, whose father migrated to Pakistan after Partition, shares that sentiment.

The actor posted a reel on Instagram on Thursday, originally made by Indian historian Obaidurrahman Siddiqui, talking about the history of Adnan’s ancestral village of Pahetiya in India’s Uttar Pradesh state — the video was shot in his family’s pre-Partition home.

The actor said he had seen Imtiaz Ali’s new film Main Vaapas Aaunga, which broke his heart, “because every scene about longing, about the promise of return, about a home that never stops calling you back, it was mine. It was my family’s story, like so many others’ too on both sides of the border.”

The actor said that was when, serendipitously, the historian reached out to him with the video from Pahetiya and Adnan just couldn’t hold back his tears.

He said his ancestors left everything behind with the hope that, someday, when things got better, they’d be able to return home. That spirit lives on in him, he said, as he was “crying over a video of stone and wood and history, feeling the pull of soil I’ve never touched”.

Adnan said he remembered his father talking about India as “my country” because he had grown up there. The actor said that was something he wasn’t full able to fully understand until he saw his own childhood home in Karachi being torn down and was “unable to move for an hour because every version of myself lived in there”.

He said home was never about where you spent the most time, it was “where you first became yourself”. Adnan said his father carried India the way he is now learning to carry Pakistan “as the place that made you, that haunts you, that you can never fully separate yourself from, no matter how long you have lived elsewhere”.

Ali’s film, which is being hailed on both sides of the border as a deep and poignant reminder of the horrors of Partition and a tribute to the generation that survived them, follows the story of Ishar Singh Grewal — played by Naseeruddin Shah — a Sikh survivor of Partition who had to leave behind the love of his life in Sargodha.

Decades later, on his deathbed, he yearns to see one last glimpse of his hometown and his beloved Afsana (Sharvari Vagh), which prompts his grandson Nirvair (Diljeet Dosanjh) to try and piece together his story.