Kandu Athare Lyrics (කඳු අතරේ) by Athma Liyanage

Bound among the mountains, like a veil of mist,
as it takes flight, our love,
quench the longing, without looking to the far shore,
of ours that is fading away,
of ours that is fading away

Did you come to know your world of love?
did you walk your world of love?
did you come to know your world of love?
did you walk your world of love?
you became another’s, and I become another’s,
I became another’s, I become another’s

Let us slip away, into the flower-garden of love,
let us slip away, into the flower-garden of love

A wistful, mist-wrapped love song from the hill country. The love is pictured bound among the mountains, like a veil of mist, taking flight and, quietly, fading away. He asks that they quench the longing without looking to the far shore, without measuring how far apart they now are, of a love that is already dissolving like mountain mist.

The middle is a string of gentle, searching questions and one hard truth. Did you come to know your world of love, did you walk it? And then the ache the whole song circles: you became another’s, and I become another’s. Whatever they had, life has handed each of them to someone else.

And yet the close refuses to let go, at least in imagination: let us slip away, into the flower-garden of love, repeated like a wish that cannot come true. Even as they belong to others, he dreams of escaping together into a garden that is theirs alone. Sung by Athma Liyanage to words by Saman Palitha Gamage, it is a tender, hill-country song about a love fading like mist between two people now bound to others, and the quiet dream of running away into a garden of love.