मैं चली रे नदी किनारे

'Mai Chali Re Nadi Kinare' is a song from Tulsi (1941), with music by Harishchandra Bali and lyrics by Pandit Phani. The title evokes a woman setting off along the riverbank — a familiar pastoral, folk-flavoured setting in films of the early 1940s. Singer credits are not documented in available sources.

The riverbank (nadi kinara) is one of the primary topoi of the Hindi feminine folk-lyric — a liminal space between the domestic and the open, where a woman moves, works, and reflects. 'Mai Chali Re Nadi Kinare' — 'I go along the riverbank' — uses the re particle characteristic of the folk-vocative: a soft exclamation or address that marks the speech as intimate and sung rather than narrated. Pandit Phani's lyric register, as seen across the several films he wrote for in this period (including Sajjan, also of 1941), tends toward the traditional poetic-folk blend, using established imagery — the river, the journey, the going-out — to frame feeling rather than describe it directly. The nadi kinara setting in the devotional or Tulsi-themed context may also carry the resonance of sacred rivers in Hindu lyric, where going to the riverbank is simultaneously an ordinary errand and a sacred act.

Tulsi (1941) was directed by Dada Gunjal with music composed by Harishchandra Bali and lyrics by Pandit Phani. The film starred Trilok Kapoor, Shalini, Srinivas, Neela, Badri Prasad, Jamshed, and Anant Marathe — a substantial ensemble for a period social picture. The surviving song list for the film, confirmed by Bollywood Hungama and related databases, includes 'Mat Chali Re Nadee Kinare' (variant of the present title), confirming the song's place in this soundtrack. Trilok Kapoor was at this stage building the career that would later make him one of Hindi cinema's most identified faces in mythological and devotional films. The film's title — Tulsi, referring to the sacred basil plant — suggests a domestic or devotional framing, consistent with the pastoral-riverbank imagery of this song. No recording or print of the film appears to be in public circulation.