Ruwan Tharaka Lyrics by Bandara Athauda

(Jewel of a star, you have risen in my eyes,
staying here in my heart, soothing all my pain)…//

(On the still, quiet night, you are the rising moon,
your cool, gentle light…
your shade brings her comfort,
always here beside me)…//
always here beside me…

Jewel of a star, you have risen in my eyes,
staying here in my heart, soothing all my pain

(A flower bloomed in the lake where the swans float,
the love that took root there…
sends its fragrance out to every side,
along the road of our youth)…//
along the road of our youth…

(Jewel of a star, you have risen in my eyes,
staying here in my heart, soothing all my pain)…//

A young man is talking to the woman he loves, and he can hardly find a plain word for her, so he reaches for the brightest things he knows. To him she is a jewel of a star that has risen in his eyes, a light he carries everywhere he looks. The whole song is him telling her, gently, that her presence has settled into his heart and taken away the ache he used to carry.

When he calls her the moon rising over a still, quiet night, he is leaning on one of the oldest images in Sinhala song. The moon here is not dazzling or hot, it is cool and soft, the kind of light that calms the dark instead of overpowering it. That is exactly what she does for him. Her closeness is a coolness, a shade he can rest under, and he says she stays beside him always, never far. The feeling is less about excitement and more about peace, the relief of finally having someone who steadies you.

In the last verse he turns to a flower blooming in the swan lake, the thisara vila, the calm water where swans drift. Their love is that flower, something that grew quietly in a beautiful, protected place and then opened. And once it opened it could not be hidden, its fragrance spreads to all four directions, drifting down what he calls the road of youth. The fragrance is their love made visible to the world, and the road of youth is this young season of their lives, the time when love like this fills everything around them.

What the listener is left holding is a soft, settled tenderness. There is no heartbreak here and no longing for something out of reach. It is the quiet happiness of a young man who has found the person who calms him, and who can only describe her by pointing at the moon, a star, and a flower in bloom.