कोई किसी से दिल न लगाये

'Koi Kisi Se Dil Na Lagaye' is a song sung by Kantilal in the 1941 Ranjit Movietone film Shaadi, composed by Khemchand Prakash. The title's warning — that one should not give one's heart away — fits the film's theme of betrayal and reconciliation in marriage, and represents the male voice within an otherwise Khursheed-dominated score.

The title 'Koi Kisi Se Dil Na Lagaye' — 'let no one give their heart to anyone' — belongs to the category of the zāhidānah or cautionary love-lyric, a song that presents love not as a desirable end but as a danger to be warned against. The third-person universal address ('koi', 'kisi') rather than an intimate 'tu' or 'tum' signals that the speaker is not addressing a beloved but issuing a general warning — broadcasting a lesson learned from personal experience to the world at large. This didactic-intimate hybrid, where the singer's pain becomes public counsel, is a recognised stance in Urdu ghazal poetry, where the speaker's disillusionment with love is presented as wisdom others should profit from. The verb 'lagānā' in 'dil lagānā' (to attach the heart, to fall in love) is idiomatic Hindi-Urdu for falling in love, but it carries the connotation of adhesion, of being stuck — implying that love is a form of entrapment rather than liberation. The lyricist for this number is not per-song documented (the film Shaadi credits Munshi Dil and D. N. Madhok at the film level), but whoever wrote this lyric worked in the cautionary-romantic tradition. Singer Kantilal, who performed this number, was a male vocalist active at several studios in the early 1940s Bombay film industry.

Shaadi (1941) was a Ranjit Movietone production — one of the most established and commercially successful studios in Bombay during the 1930s and early 1940s, founded by Chandulal Shah in 1929. Ranjit Movietone's productions were known for their polish, their strong female leads, and their commitment to musical content; the studio's most prominent singer in this period was Khursheed (Khurshid), and 'Koi Kisi Se Dil Na Lagaye' by Kantilal represented the studio's male vocal contribution to the Shaadi soundtrack alongside the female-dominated numbers. Khemchand Prakash composed the score. The film's theme of marriage — 'shaadi' means wedding — and its lyrical treatment of love's dangers and the possibility of betrayal and reconciliation within marriage reflects the social-drama concerns of Ranjit's films. Khemchand Prakash was at the height of his creative powers at Ranjit in the early 1940s; he would go on to compose the legendary 'Aayega Aanewala' for Mahal (1949) before his early death in 1950 at around age 45. The film credits Munshi Dil and D. N. Madhok as the principal lyricists for the soundtrack at the film level, though per-song attribution has not been confirmed.

Khemchand Prakash's reputation from this Ranjit Movietone period was revived and enormously amplified by his posthumous association with 'Aayega Aanewala' from Mahal (1949) — one of the most celebrated songs in Hindi film history. Music historians discussing Prakash's career consistently reference his 1940s Ranjit Movietone work as the foundation that produced the distinctive harmonic sensibility of his later achievements. While 'Koi Kisi Se Dil Na Lagaye' itself is not cited in this retrospective literature, its existence as part of the Ranjit Movietone corpus shaped by Khemchand Prakash gives it documentary value in understanding the arc of that career. Kantilal's work in Shaadi has not been the subject of separate critical attention; his contribution here is documented as a historical data point in the record of male playback singing in early 1940s Bombay.