Dedunna Sedi Lyrics by Bathiya and Santhush (BnS)

The rainbow washed away, the tank brimming over,
a pale purple rain came down from the sky.
She became a bride, the fire in her heart stirred up,
and I saw her leave for another village, blurring out of sight.

A love bound to my heart since we were children,
it ended without the golden thali ever being tied at her neck.
By the time those years had passed and I came back to my village,
she had been married off and gone away without a word.

The rainbow washed away, the tank brimming over,
a pale purple rain came down from the sky.

In the madan grove, down by the bend in the thicket,
the verses and songs we had sung since childhood
drifted away, tangled up in the wind,
erasing the heart-songs we had made in the name of love.

Just like that, unexpected…
the petals of our love scatter, and the gentle heart breaks down…
Without my ever wishing it, this fated journey has to be walked…
through tears, like this…

The rainbow washed away…

On the pale blue sand, by the edge of the reservoir,
because she swore an oath to me from her heart,
those tears that welled and overflowed from her eyes,
the love we bound on the day they spilled at the gate.

The day I was left alone…
in secret, my head bowed only to a mother and father’s love…
The day I never wished for… I will leave my heart and go to the heaven of the gods, my sweet…
the star-eyes are closing…

The rainbow washed away…
A love since childhood…

The rainbow washed away, the tank brimming over,
a pale purple rain came down from the sky.

A man is looking back on a love he carried from childhood, a love that ended before it could ever become his. He sets the whole memory against weather and water. A rainbow washes out of the sky, the village tank fills and overflows, and a soft purple rain comes down. In Sinhala song the tank brimming over and the rain falling are quiet stand-ins for tears and for a heart that can hold no more, so before he says anything plain, the landscape itself is already crying. The rainbow, that brief and beautiful thing, fading and washing away is the love itself, lovely while it lasted and gone too soon.

The story underneath is simple and it is one many village families know. He loved a girl since they were small, but the golden thali was never tied at her neck. That necklace is the heart of a Sinhala wedding, the moment a marriage becomes real, so saying it was never tied means they never married. While he was away and the years passed, her family married her off to someone in another village, and by the time he came home she was already gone, without even a goodbye. He stands and watches her figure blur out of sight as she leaves, and that blurring is partly distance and partly his own eyes filling up.

The middle of the song goes back to the small, specific places where the love lived, the madan grove and the bend in the thicket where they used to sing together as children. Those songs do not stay; they come loose and scatter on the wind, and with them the heart-songs they made in the name of love are wiped out. It is his way of saying the memories themselves are slipping from him, carried off the way the wind carries everything in the end. The petals of their love scatter, and he admits this parting was never something he wished for. It is just a fate he has to walk through, in tears.

By the close the loss turns final. He remembers her swearing an oath to him on the pale sand by the reservoir, her eyes overflowing, the love they bound on the day those tears spilled. Then comes the hardest turn. Left alone, he bows his head only to the love of a mother and father, and someone speaks of leaving the heart behind and going to the heaven of the gods as the star-eyes close. In Sinhala that image of going to the deva loka, the world of the gods, and the eyes shutting like stars going out is the gentle way of saying death. The love did not just slip away into another marriage; in the end she is lost to him for good. What the listener is left holding is the ache of a man who never got to tie that golden thread, watching everything he loved wash away like a rainbow after rain.