दुख को दुख समझो तो दुख है

One of six songs from S.M. Yusuf's 1941 film Laheri Jeewan, composed by Vasant Kumar Naidu. Its title carries the reflective, almost Vedantic register common to film songs of the era — that suffering is a matter of perception. The contemplative titles of this soundtrack ('Dukh Sukh Ka Hai Khel Ye Duniya', 'Hansi Khushi Ka Khel') share that philosophical bent. Singer and lyricist are not documented in the sources consulted; the song survives in the HindiGeetMala index of the film.

The title 'Dukh Ko Dukh Samjho To Dukh Hai' (Sorrow is sorrow only if you name it sorrow) encapsulates a conditionally liberating philosophical proposition in a single line. It resonates with the Vedantic tradition in which suffering is located not in events but in their cognitive classification — a teaching found in the Yoga Vasistha's elaborations on chitta (mind) and its categorising power. The Buddhist Dhammapada opens with a similar declaration: 'Mind is the forerunner of all actions.' This song title takes that classical teaching and renders it in the vernacular directness of the film-song form. The rhetorical structure — the conditional 'if you see sorrow as sorrow' — does not counsel denial but a kind of cognitive reframing: the world's hardship is unchanged, only the label shifts. In the social film of 1941, delivered by a character experiencing actual hardship, this would carry a bitter edge alongside the consoling one — a philosophical instruction that asks more of the listener than mere comfort.

One of six songs from S.M. Yusuf's Laheri Jeewan (1941), this title forms a philosophical pair with 'Dukh Sukh Ka Hai Khel Ye Duniya' — the two songs sharing both the word 'dukh' and the intellectual posture of stepping back from suffering to observe it analytically. Vasant Kumar Naidu's score for Laheri Jeewan is unusual in the 1941 Hindi film landscape for the consistency of its philosophical register: the six documented songs, taken together, describe a worldview in which sorrow and joy are contingent labels, life is a flowing wave, and mind is the determinant of suffering. This was not merely decorative philosophising — the film's title 'Laheri Jeewan' (wave-like life) and its lead cast (Husn Banu, Gope, W.M. Khan) suggest a production interested in the relationship between temperament and fate, the comedy and tragedy of disposition. In that context, a song titled 'Dukh Ko Dukh Samjho To Dukh Hai' would serve as the score's philosophical anchor, the statement of a creed to which the other songs are variations.