रे जीवन सागर में

'Re Jeevan Sagar Me' ('in the ocean of life') is one of the ten Himanshu Dutta compositions for Bhaichara (1943). The life-as-ocean metaphor — boats, currents, the far shore — was a staple of socially-minded films of the 1940s, sitting well with a picture whose title means 'brotherhood'. The film's lyrics were the collective work of Kumar Vyas, Uday Shankar Bhatt, Ishwar Chandra Kapoor, M.R. Kapoor and Nazir Bedi.

Himanshu Dutta brought the song-led restraint of the Bengali gramophone tradition — kin to Nazrul-Geeti — into his Hindi films. A contemplative, life-philosophy lyric like this typically called for a measured tempo and a stately melodic line, with the orchestration kept deliberately spare so the words could be heard.