दो नैना मतवारे तिहारे

Street Singer gave Kanan Devi a lighter counterpart to Saigal's tragic grandeur. 'Do Naina Matware' is a Khamaj-tinged number where the woman playfully warns her beloved that his intoxicating eyes are a threat she refuses to take seriously. Mullick's setting is lilting and feminine in contrast to the film's darker tones, establishing Kanan Devi's signature style: warmth with a glimmer of mischief.

Mullick's Khamaj setting uses the raga's characteristic sweetness and slight asymmetry — the phrase that starts upward resolves unexpectedly, mirroring the playful refusal in the lyric. Kanan Devi's middle register was ideally suited: rich without being heavy.

Kedar Sharma's lyric deploys a time-honoured Braj Bhasha trope: the eyes as intoxicants, the beloved's gaze as a substance that undoes rational self-possession. The word 'matware' — from 'mast', meaning intoxicated, entranced — is applied to the eyes rather than to the speaker, creating an inversion: it is not the lover who is drunk but the eyes themselves, inherently unruly. The refrain 'hamse naahin lariyo' (don't fight with me, or: don't quarrel with me) is addressed directly to those eyes, as if they were independent agents capable of intent. This personification of the beloved's features as autonomous actors in the drama of love is classical Braj Bhasha convention, visible in Surdas and Bihari; Sharma brings it into a 1930s film lyric with light touch, keeping the diction just archaic enough to signal the thumri tradition without alienating a cinema audience. The word 'tihare' — an archaic Braj form of 'tumhare' (yours) — adds precisely this patina of classical sweetness. The imagery is entirely visual and tactile, with no metaphysical elaboration; the song is seduction comedy, not philosophy.

Street Singer (1938) was directed by Phani Mazumdar for New Theatres in Calcutta and starred K.L. Saigal in the title role of a wandering singer alongside Kanan Devi as the female lead. Pankaj Mullick, one of New Theatres' principal music directors, composed the score. 'Do Naina Matware Tihare' was one of the lighter numbers designed to provide tonal contrast to the film's more tragic registers — a playful thumri-inflected piece for Kanan Devi that showcased a different facet of her voice from the more emotionally weighted songs Saigal dominated. The film was shot at New Theatres' Tollygunge studios, and production records indicate that the musical numbers were recorded before filming, with playback technique by then standard at New Theatres. Kedar Sharma, who wrote the lyrics, was already a prolific figure in Calcutta before his later fame as a Bombay director-lyricist. Kanan Devi's rapport with Mullick's musical language was well established by 1938, and her ease in the Khamaj-inflected setting of this song reflects a creative partnership already in its most confident phase.

A signature Kanan Devi record of the late New Theatres era, frequently cited alongside 'Meri Baat Rahi Mere Man Mein' as evidence of her range in the lighter mode.