रुत आये रुत जाये

A reflective song on the passing of seasons from Chitralekha (1941), with lyrics by Kedar Sharma. Its theme of transience echoes the film's larger meditation on impermanence, desire and renunciation in a Mauryan-era story. The classically grounded score was begun by Ustad Jhande Khan and completed by A. S. Gyani. Singer credit for this track is not documented in available listings.

The image of seasons turning — "rut aaye rut jaaye" (the season comes, the season goes) — is one of the oldest lyrical metaphors in Indian poetry, running from Sanskrit seasonal verse through Brajbhasha into modern film song. In Bhagwati Charan Verma's novel Chitralekha (on which the film is based), the theme of impermanence binds together the meditation on desire, renunciation, and the impossibility of holding what is transient. Kedar Sharma's lyrics for the film consistently placed the natural world — seasons, time, the turning cosmos — as a frame for human emotional experience. Ustad Jhande Khan set the film's songs to classical ragas including Bhairavi and Asavari; Bhairavi, the morning raga associated with parting and finality, was an apt choice for a seasonal-transience theme. The phrase "rut aaye rut jaaye" achieves its effect through absolute simplicity — the same three-word phrase twice, with a shift from arrival to departure — allowing the raga, the melody, and the vocalist to carry the full philosophical weight.

Chitralekha (1941) was directed and lyrically authored by Kidar Nath Sharma (born 1910, Narowal, undivided Punjab), adapted from Bhagwati Charan Verma's 1934 Hindi novel. It was a major commercial achievement — the second-highest grossing Indian film of 1941 — and also a legal landmark: Chitralekha (1941) was the first Indian film to receive formal objections from the Central Board of Film Censors, marking a new chapter in cinema's relationship with official authority. The score was begun by Ustad Jhande Khan and completed, after health intervened, by A. S. Gyani. Kedar Sharma wrote all lyrics himself — maintaining complete creative control as director and sole lyricist — and the film featured Mehtab in the title role. Sharma was a multifaceted artist: painter, poet, director, screenwriter. He also launched the screen careers of Raj Kapoor, Madhubala, and Geeta Bali.

Kidar Sharma remade Chitralekha in 1964 with Ashok Kumar, Meena Kumari, and Pradeep Kumar, this time with music by Roshan and lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi. Songs from the 1964 version — particularly "Sansaar Se Bhaage Phirte Ho" and "Mann Re Tu Kaahe Na Dheer Dhare" — became far more widely remembered than any number from the original, and the 1964 film is the version most audiences know today. The 1941 Chitralekha, despite its commercial and censorship significance, exists now primarily as a historical footnote: its songs, including "Ruth Aaye Ruth Jaye," survive in catalogues and discographies rather than in circulation. Kedar Sharma (1910–1999) himself is remembered more for his directorial discoveries — Raj Kapoor, Madhubala, Geeta Bali, Bharat Bhushan — than for the films he made, a reversal of the usual relationship between a filmmaker's work and their legacy.