Udarata Niliya Lyrics by Annesley Malawana

(Lovely as the up-country dancer’s form,
how beautiful the way her red-tipped fingers sway,
like a swarm of bees jostling
to drink the nectar from the flowers,
how beautiful the way her red-tipped fingers sway…//)

(She brings honour and grace
to the Sinhala nation, this up-country dancer…//)
(Your soft, gentle smile,
a charm upon those golden lips…//)
How beautiful the way her red-tipped fingers sway

Lovely as the up-country dancer’s form….

(Setting her feet to the beat of the drums,
enchanting all who watch…//)
(Our lovely dancer, our shining star,
the beauty of all the up-country…//)
How beautiful the way her red-tipped fingers sway

Lovely as the up-country dancer’s form….//

This is a song in praise of a Kandyan dancer, the “udarata niliya” of the up-country highlands, the heart of Sri Lanka’s classical dance tradition. It is not a love song so much as an admiring portrait, the kind of thing you would hear sung as a dancer moves across the floor to the drums, with the whole crowd watching her. The voice belongs to someone caught up in that performance, putting into words how graceful and striking she is.

The image the song keeps returning to is her hands. Kandyan dancers paint their fingertips red, so when her fingers move and flutter through the dance, you see ten points of colour tracing the air. The lyric compares this to a swarm of honeybees crowding and jostling over flowers to reach the nectar. It is a lovely, exact comparison, the quick, restless, many-pointed motion of her painted fingers really does look like bees busy over blossoms, and it tells you the dance is not still and stately here but quick and alive.

From there the song widens out. Her gentle smile and the little charm or beauty mark on her golden lips are noticed, then the drums come in and her feet fall into the beat, and everyone watching is left spellbound. The closing lines lift her up as more than just a pretty dancer, she is “our dancer, our shining star,” the pride of the whole up-country, someone who brings honour to the Sinhala people through her art. That is the real feeling underneath the song, a quiet national pride in Kandyan dance, dressed up as praise for one beautiful woman performing it.

By the end you are left with the sense of a living tradition carried in one figure, the red fingertips, the drumbeat, the swaying steps, all the things that make this dance unmistakably Sri Lankan, and the warmth of a whole audience proud to call her their own.