Maa Handawala (Remake) Lyrics by Bathiya and Santhush (BnS)

You made me cry, you shook my heart,
long ago my eyes turned red with tears.
Now, never again like that,
my heart is full of love and overflowing.

My mind awake, my eyes bright and clear,
I met you, and a sweetness filled the air.
All through my life, here I come,
holding you with both my hands.

You made me cry, you shook my heart …

This heart of mine cannot be torn away,
raking through my mind brings me no peace.
The sun will never rise from the western hills,
and she and I can never be together.

You made me cry, you shook my heart …
(my heart is full of love and overflowing)

A young man is looking back on a love that once hurt enough to make him weep. He opens with the memory of it, the tears that turned his eyes red long ago, and then turns it around: that pain is behind him now, and what is left is a heart so full of love it spills over. The remembered crying is not bitterness here, it is the sign of how deeply he felt, the proof that the love was real.

From there the song softens into something tender. His mind feels awake again, his eyes clear, and the moment he met her the air itself seems sweeter. When he sings of a fragrance filling the air, he is not talking about a literal scent. In Sinhala song the “suwanda,” the sweet smell, is the standing image for the happiness and grace a loved one brings, the way a person can make everything around them feel lighter and better just by being there. He pictures himself walking through his whole life with her hand held in both of his, which is the quiet promise at the centre of the song.

Then comes the ache. He says his heart cannot be torn out of him, and no amount of going over things in his mind can settle him. The strongest line is the one about the sun: it can never rise from the western hills. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, always, so to say it will rise in the west is to name something that simply cannot happen. He sets that impossibility right beside “she and I can never be together.” The love is true and his heart is full, yet the one thing he wants is as impossible as the sun coming up in the wrong direction.

That is what the listener is left holding: a love deep enough to overflow a heart, carried by a man who knows it will never become the life he imagined with her hand in his. The sweetness and the loss sit side by side, and neither one cancels the other.