इश्क़ है दिल की बर्बादी फिर क्यूँ ग़म की आबादी

'Ishq Hai Dil Ki Barbadi Phir Kyu Gam Ki Aabaadi' is one of the nine songs of Mohan Pictures' 1941 costume-fantasy Allaudin Laila, composed by Master Basheer to lyrics by Munshi Nayab. Its title frames the classic Urdu paradox of love as both ruin and sustenance, a register typical of the era's romantic-fantasy soundtracks.

The title 'Ishq Hai Dil Ki Barbadi Phir Kyu Gam Ki Aabaadi' presents one of the core paradoxes of the Urdu ghazal: the opposition of barbadi (ruin, destruction) and aabaadi (settlement, population, life). To say that love is the 'barbadi' of the heart is the oldest complaint in the tradition; to then ask 'phir kyu gam ki aabaadi?' (then why is sorrow so populated / why do we continue to inhabit grief?) is to expose the voluntary nature of the suffering. The word 'aabaadi' (literally 'habitation, settlement') used against 'barbadi' is a striking internal rhyme — the sound of fullness (populated sorrow) against the sound of emptiness (devastation). The ghazal genre attribution in the entity and the slow tempo indicate that lyricist Munshi Nayab composed this number in the Urdu-classical grief-contemplation mode, likely as a philosophical centrepiece within Allaudin Laila's fantastical narrative. In the context of an Aladdin-story, such a meditation on love's self-destructiveness would suit a character caught in an unrequited or impossible love.

Allaudin Laila (1941) was a costume-fantasy film produced by Mohan Pictures, Bombay and directed by A. M. Khan — the same director who made Muslim Ka Lal for the same house the same year. The film was released on 13 October 1941 and starred Jayant, Ameena, Ghulam Mohammad, Zahoor, and Indurani. Drawing on the tradition of Arabian Nights fantasy films that had been popular in Indian cinema since the silent era, Allaudin Laila dramatised the Aladdin story with the addition of a romantic character named Laila. Music was by Master Basheer with lyrics by Munshi Nayab. The film is documented as having nine songs, and 'Ishq Hai Dil Ki Barbadi' — as a slow, philosophical ghazal — would have served the mournful interior monologues typical of such fantasies, where the hero and heroine are separated by supernatural forces. The singer is not documented in surviving discographies.