دل دھڑکنے دو Dil Dhadakne Do — Let the Heart Beat

Come on, let us find a new city, where smiles lie scattered and the season of grief has gone. Where sweet words are exchanged with every stranger. Let us forget all our worries too. Moment by moment, let the happiness scatter. Here and there, and everywhere: let us go where the heart says to go.

The passage is built on the same verb twice. Bikhri, scattered, describes the smiles of the new city, and bikhrein, let them scatter, describes the happiness of the journey. The new city is a place where even strangers speak sweetly, which is the film's dream of a family that talks to itself like guests. The last line hands the map to the heart, and the song never takes it back.

فکر fikr

worry, a care

How long do we keep counting the heartbeats? Let the heart beat the way it beats. Why is there some fire pressed down inside? Whatever flame wants to catch, let it catch.

The refrain is a double command and both halves rhyme with the title. Counting the heartbeats is what anxious families do; letting them beat is the alternative. The second couplet is sharper. There is a fire being pressed down, and the song does not ask where the fire came from, only why it is being pressed. Dabi, hidden and held down, is the song's diagnosis of the family it was written for.

شعلہ shola

a flame

بھڑکنا bhadakna

to flare up, to catch

Let us sing new songs. Why not play a game in which everybody wins? These days nobody looks at the flowers and the stars. Let us look at them, gone mad, no matter how much anyone scolds us. Let the air be open, the sky open. Let every longing be awake.

The passage is the film's manifesto and it reads like a children's list of demands. The game in which everyone wins is a direct answer to the competitive family the characters come from. Deewaane hoke, being mad, is offered as the proper way to look at flowers and stars, and the scolding is part of the charm. The last couplet wakes everything: open air, open sky, longings awake. Nothing in the passage belongs to the adult world.

ارمان armaan

a longing held on to for a long time

ٹوکنا tokna

to interrupt somebody, to pull them up

Whatever things the heart has said to us, come, let us agree with them. The road that nobody walks, let us walk it. A little wandering, a little intoxication, baby. There is you, there is me, baby.

The song's last word on its own advice. The heart has said things, and the suggestion is agreement, maan lein, the word for accepting a request. Then the deliberately odd road: the one nobody walks. The passage pairs aawargi, wandering without a purpose, with madhoshiyan, mild intoxication, and the song's final position is that these two are not vices. The baby that rhymes with it is the song dropping its guard, admitting it is a pop song after all, and meaning it.

آوارگی aawargi

wandering, a life with no fixed place

مدہوشی madhoshi

a swooning intoxication