Siyambala Malak Lyrics by Asanka Priyamantha Peiris

When a tamarind flower blooms in your cupped hands,
I can’t fly away from those two eyes of yours.
Toward a pair of golden butterflies drifting in flight,
to the single nest where the fragrance of love lives in your heart.

(The love letters you wrote, those lines of verse, are lovely,
and the love in your golden heart is pure…//)
I won’t let you be alone, this
heart of mine loves you.

A tamarind flower in your cupped hands….

(The full moon kissing your eyes is beautiful on a night like this,
don’t forget me, my moon-faced love…//)
Come to me in a dream
and stay in my bed, my goddess.

A tamarind flower in your cupped hands….

A young man is speaking softly to the girl he loves, and the whole song is one long tender promise that she will never be alone again. He is not chasing her or pleading, he has already given his heart, and now he is just letting her know how completely he means it.

He opens with a small, homely image. The siyambala mala, the tamarind flower, is a tiny, modest bloom, nothing showy, the kind of thing you would barely notice on the tree. When he pictures it blooming in her cupped palms, he is saying that even the smallest, plainest beauty becomes precious in her hands. Caught by that, he says he cannot fly away from her eyes, the way a butterfly settles on a flower and stays. That image carries into the next lines, where the two of them become a pair of golden butterflies drifting through the air toward one nest, the place where the scent of love already lives in her heart. In Sinhala song a sweet fragrance, suwanda, stands for love itself, something you can’t see but feel everywhere, so he is telling her the love is already there, and he just wants to fly to it.

The middle of the song turns gentle and intimate. He praises the love letters and little verses she wrote him and calls the love in her heart pure, then makes his quiet vow: I won’t let you be alone, this heart loves you. Later he reaches for the moon, the favourite image of Sinhala love poetry for a calm, glowing, beloved face. He calls her sandawatha, his moon-faced one, and dewduwa, a goddess or celestial maiden, the highest praise a Sinhala lyric gives a woman, lifting her almost out of reach. On a beautiful moonlit night he asks only one thing, that she not forget him, and that she come to him even in a dream and stay close.

What stays with you is how soft the longing is. There is no heartbreak here, no separation tearing them apart, just a young man holding someone dear and wanting nothing more than to keep her near, in waking life or in a dream. The tamarind flower and the butterflies keep it small and earthly, the moon and the goddess lift it up high, and between the two the song says something simple that everyone in love understands, that you have found someone you never want to be without.