आज तो झूमती है डाली डाली

A song from Aasra (1941) with lyrics by Safdar Aah and music by Anil Biswas. The playback singer is not specified in the available discographies. The number appears in the film's documented eleven-song list.

The image of swaying branches — 'jhoomti hai dali dali' — is among the most durable expressions of natural joy in Hindi poetry. Branches do not move by their own will; their swaying implies wind or seasonal change, and in the lyric tradition, both are figures for the beloved's arrival or for an inner state of elation that the natural world appears to share. Safdar 'Aah' was a literary lyricist who worked with careful attention to image and sound; the repetition of 'dali dali' — branch after branch — creates a rhythmic sense of the whole forest caught in the same motion, as if joy is contagious and spreads from tree to tree. The seasonal context (spring or the rain) situates the song in a tradition going back to the classical Sanskrit ritu-geet (seasonal song) and the Braj devotional song, where nature's transformation is inseparable from the human speaker's emotional state. 'Aaj to' — 'today, at least' — introduces a temporality that grounds the joy: it is specifically today that the branches sway, making the happiness acute and present.

Aasra (1941) was directed by Chimankant Gandhi and Lalit J. Mehta, with music composed by Anil Biswas — one of the most significant composers of the Hindi film song's formative decade. The film starred Sardar Akhtar, Husn Banu, Bhudo Advani, Nisar Ahmad Ansari, Kanhaiyalal, Veena, and Wasker. Anil Biswas (1914–2003) had begun composing for films in the mid-1930s and by 1941 was among Bombay cinema's most in-demand composers, noted for his integration of orchestral textures and choral effects into what had previously been a sparser film-music idiom. Lyrics for Aasra were written by Dr. Safdar 'Aah', a literary lyricist whose work carried genuine poetic weight. The film's eleven documented songs include number in various registers; 'Aaj To Jhoomti Hai Dali Dali' — 'today every branch is swaying' — is a spring or nature-celebration song, its image of swaying branches signalling collective natural joy. The singers for the film included Sardar Akhtar, Anil Biswas himself, and Binapani Mukherjee; the specific singer for this number is not confirmed at the individual song level.