Thaththa Unath Lyrics by Amaradeva

(Though I am the father who puts food on the table,
it is you, the mother, who keeps my sons and daughters safe…//)

Giving our children the love that once was mine alone,
when you wear yourself out, day and night, without rest,
with a love that hadn’t even stirred in my heart the day I first saw you,
my heart now brims over, drawing in closer to you.

Your scent, which wakes a feeling close to reverence,
rests always on the lotus face of our little son in your arms.
Not as my wife, but as a mother,
is how you feel to me when you sit near and kiss my head.

(Though I am the father who puts food on the table,
it is you, the mother, who keeps my sons and daughters safe…//)

A husband is speaking to his wife, and he is doing something Sinhala love songs rarely do. He is looking at the woman he has been married to for years, watching her raise their children, and telling her that his love for her is deeper now than it ever was at the start. He admits something honest in the refrain: yes, he is the father, the one who earns and provides, but the real shelter for their children is her. She is the one who keeps them safe. He puts her work above his own.

The arc of the song is the growth of a quiet, settled love. In the first verse he watches her give their children the same affection she once kept for him, working without rest through day and night, and instead of feeling pushed aside he feels his heart overflow. He says it plainly: the love he feels now did not even exist on the day he first met her. It grew slowly, through years of shared life, into something far stronger than the spark of first attraction. That is the truth at the centre of this song, that married love can deepen long after the wedding rather than fade.

The second verse is where the imagery does its work. He speaks of her suwanda, her fragrance, but in Sinhala this is not just a scent, it is the whole presence and warmth of a person, and here it carries something almost devotional. He sees that same warmth resting on the muwa kamala, the lotus face, of their baby son cradled in her arms. The lotus is the standing image of purity and gentle beauty in Sri Lankan poetry, often tied to the sacred, so by giving it to the child he lifts the whole picture of mother and infant toward something holy.

The last lines are the most tender turn of all. When she sits beside him and kisses his head, he says she no longer feels to him like his wife but like a mother. To a Western ear that might sound strange, but here it is the highest praise he can offer. In Sri Lankan life the mother is the most revered figure there is, and the husband is saying that his wife has grown so giving, so caring toward him and their children, that the love he feels for her has crossed over into something like the reverence a person feels for their own mother. Written by Sunil Ariyarathna and carried by Amaradeva’s voice, it is a rare song about the kind of love that arrives quietly, after the children, after the years, and turns out to be the strongest love of all.