मत जा तू मतवाली तू मत जा

A pleading love song from Kasauti (1941) with lyrics by Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi and music by Ashok Ghosh. The documented song listing does not record the playback singer for this track. Its refrain entreats the beloved not to leave.

Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi was a lyricist of the transitional generation — writing for Hindi cinema at the moment when Urdu mushaira culture was being blended with Braj and Awadhi folk registers into what would become the standard Hindi film lyric. His title 'Mat Ja Tu Matwali, Tu Mat Ja' — 'Do not go, you intoxicating one; you, do not go' — works through the doubling of the imperative and the pivot on 'Tu' (you), which places all urgency on the beloved's presence rather than the speaker's grief. Matwali (the intoxicating, heady one) is a loaded word in the Urdu lyric tradition: it evokes someone whose very movement intoxicates, whose departure creates a void like the withdrawal of wine. The repeated refrain construction — mat ja... tu mat ja — is a formal device common in both thumri and the lighter film song, where the plea is heightened by reiteration. Chaturvedi's verse tends toward the colloquial and warm rather than the formal divan register, making this more a cry from the heart than an exercise in poetic convention.

Kasauti (1941) was produced by National Studios and directed by Ramchandra Thakur, a protégé of the Sagar Movietone house, after the original production arrangement with Sagar fell through. The film carried thirteen songs composed by Ashok Ghosh to lyrics primarily by Kanhaiyalal Chaturvedi, with additional contributions from Neelkanth Tiwari. National Studios, a Bombay outfit that released through the early 1940s, was less celebrated than Prabhat or Bombay Talkies but consistently produced mid-range socials and dramas with substantial song counts. The cast included Miss Rose, Prahlad, Veena, Sunalini Devi, Satish, and Marutirao Pehelwan — a roster of character actors and supporting players typical of the studio's stable. Most remarkably, the child artist credited as Baby Meena was Meena Kumari, who had begun her screen career in her earliest years before her transformative adult career. No surviving print of the film is known to exist in public archives, and per-song singer attribution has not been preserved in accessible records.