Mindada Hee Sara Lyrics by Amaradeva

Pierced by Cupid’s arrow, has my trembling heart,
and the sorrowful songs it raises, do they reach you?
To this bed spread with heavenly flowers,
cut through the mountain and rise, golden full moon. //

Mounted on a steed of dark blue clouds,
as you come drifting down from the belly of the sky,
I sit watching with eyes wide awake,
my heart brimming with smiles like blossoms.

Pierced by Cupid’s arrow…

The veil of darkness that has covered your face
all this long while, cast it off,
and with the lamp of your jewel-like eyes, light my way,
clearing the path of my days to come.

Pierced by Cupid’s arrow…

A man is awake in the night, his heart aching, and he turns that ache into song and sends it up to the moon. The opening line says his heart has been struck by “Cupid’s arrow,” in Sinhala the flower-arrow of the god of love, so the very first thing we know is that he is in love and it hurts. He asks the moon a tender, almost pleading question: can you hear the sad songs my wounded heart is raising? In this song the moon is not just the moon in the sky. She is the beloved, the woman he loves and longs for, and he speaks to the moon the way he would speak to her if she were near.

So when he calls her to come down to a bed spread with heavenly flowers and to “cut through the mountain and rise, golden full moon,” he is calling his beloved to come to him. The image is the real one we all know, the full moon climbing over a hill at night, but he reads his own longing into it. He wants her to break through whatever stands between them and appear. Then he watches her come, riding on dark blue clouds the way the moon really does seem to ride a bank of cloud across the sky. He sits there with his eyes wide open, unable to look away, his heart filling up with joy, smiles opening in him like flowers opening. That is the lift in the middle of the song, the pure happiness of finally seeing the one you have been waiting for.

The last verse is where the longing turns into a quiet prayer. For so long, he says, your face has been hidden behind a veil of darkness, the moon covered by cloud, the beloved kept out of reach. He asks her to throw off that dark veil and show her face. And then comes the line the whole song builds toward: with the lamp of your jewel-like eyes, light my way and clear the path of the days ahead of me. Her eyes become a lamp, the small oil lamp Sri Lankans light to drive away darkness, and he asks that light to guide his future. What began as the pang of a wounded heart ends as something gentler and deeper, a man asking the person he loves to be the light he walks his life by. That blend of romantic ache and almost sacred devotion, carried in Amaradeva’s voice, is why this remains one of the most loved songs in Sinhala music.