Podi Walan Kade Lyrics by Chamika Ranawaka

Little pot stall, clay pots and bowls, pots of milk curd and treacle, pots and pots
Where’s the little lass who used to sell the goods?
Pots and bowls packed into boxes on the wooden shelves
The shop is shut, where’s that little lass?……//

When we go on pilgrimage and come up to the pottery stall
Pretty village scenes appear, there are clay pots and wares at home
Her smile is precious to me, I feel like buying yet more pots
Every day on my pilgrimage I brought back a load of pots
The house fills up with pots, too many pots at home now
My wife flies at my neck, says the pottery stall is moving into the house…….

Little pot stall…..

Wearing a printed cloth, combing her hair with oil through it
She sells goods to the crowd
Slices of dodol with treacle dripping, jaggery oozing its sweetness
A vegetable stall smiling away
Bitter gourd, brinjal, snake gourd, mango, rambutan, rose apple, guava
I buy them by the sackful, oh, in my foolishness
Business booms for the lass, and I’m left lost with no money

Little pot stall…..//

This is a light, comic song, the kind that grins at its own narrator. A man keeps finding excuses to stop at a little roadside pottery stall, a “walan kade,” because of the girl who runs it. The joke is right there in the setup: he tells himself he is buying clay pots, but what he is really doing is going back to see her smile.

The whole thing is built around the village pilgrimage route. In Sri Lanka, people travel to temples and shrines (the vandanawa), and the road is lined with little stalls selling clay pots, curd, treacle and sweets. Every time he passes this particular stall on his way to worship, he buys another batch of pots, until his house is overflowing with them. The line about his wife “flying at his neck” is everyday Sinhala for getting an earful, she is fed up that the pottery shop has basically moved into their home. He even half admits the truth: it is the girl’s smile he keeps coming back for, not the pottery.

The second verse zooms in on her at the market, in a printed cotton cloth with her hair freshly oiled and combed, surrounded by the sweets of a village fair: dodol and treacle, jaggery dripping sweetness, and heaps of vegetables, bitter gourd, brinjal, snake gourd, mango, rambutan, rose apple, guava. The vegetable stall itself is described as “smiling,” which is really her charm spilling over onto everything around her. Smitten, he buys produce by the sackful he does not need, and the punchline lands: her business booms while he ends up broke and “lost,” with empty pockets.

What makes the song work is that it never pretends to be a grand love story. It is the familiar, slightly embarrassing comedy of a man who cannot stop spending money just to linger near someone he likes, and who knows it. The opening, asking where the little lass and her now shuttered stall have gone, gives it a small wistful turn at the very start, but the heart of it is warm and funny, a fond village portrait of infatuation that empties your wallet one clay pot at a time.