Inkaar OST

The Story Behind Inkaar OST

Inkaar is the theme song of a HUM TV serial about a young woman who refuses, and it keeps that word for its own title. Sami Khan composed the song and wrote its words, and the broadcaster credits the vocal to Faiza Mujahid alongside Yumna Zaidi, the serial's lead, which is a rare billing for an actress who spends the rest of the story in front of a camera rather than a microphone. It reached YouTube on 12 March 2019, one day after the drama premiered. Kashif Nisar directed that drama for MD Productions from Zafar Mairaj's script, following a university student who will not be talked out of saying no. Everything here turns on the line the theme is known by, ek baar hai inkaar. The serial went on to win Yumna Zaidi the Best TV Actress award at the 19th Lux Style Awards.

Meaning & Translation

Inkaar is Urdu for refusal or denial. It is the flat, formal word for the thing, closer to "I refuse" than to a casual no, and it carries a finality that the English word has to borrow from tone.

The theme is known by the phrase ek baar hai inkaar, which reads roughly as "once, it is a refusal": a no said one time needs no repeating and no defending. Sung over a story in which a young woman's refusal is disbelieved, argued over and finally dragged through a courtroom, the line stops working as a lyric and becomes the argument the serial itself is making, that consent is not a negotiation anybody gets to reopen.