Hitha Hadaganna Ba Lyrics by Chamika Sirimanna

I can’t console my heart, I can’t bear the pain you’ve given me
You won’t be mine, and now the two of us will never be our own again
You loved another heart and left me, you cast our love aside
And I cry forever, carrying my sorrow on the wind
I can’t console my heart, I can’t bear the pain you’ve given me

In the days you spent beside me, loving me, giving me your life
Every word you said still comes back to me, here in my world gone empty
Wetting my dreams with tears, you hid yourself far away
You left me in the dark, and today you are not here before my eyes
And I cry forever, carrying my sorrow on the wind

My dreams have faded, my eyes can’t see, you’ve been given to someone else
I’m left alone, my eyes blur over, who can I even tell this to
My life drifts away, telling me there is no love
Leaving me forever, are you going far away tonight
And I cry forever, carrying my sorrow on the wind…

I can’t console my heart….

A young man is sitting with a loss he cannot talk himself out of. The very first line says it all: he keeps telling his own heart to calm down, to accept that it’s over, and it simply won’t. The one he loved has chosen someone else, and he knows there is no going back, the two of them will never belong to each other again. From there the whole song is him turning that pain over and over, unable to put it down.

The middle of the song is where the ache really opens up. He goes back to the time when she was beside him, when she loved him and, as he puts it, gave him her whole life. Every little thing she once said still echoes in his head, except now it echoes in a world that has gone empty around him. That’s the cruelty of it: the memories haven’t faded even though she has. There’s a beautiful, quiet image here, “wetting my dreams with tears,” the dreams the two of them once shared are now soaked in his crying. She has hidden herself far away and left him standing in the dark, and the face he used to see in front of him every day is simply gone.

By the last verse the loss has spread into everything. His dreams have dissolved, his eyes blur over so he can’t even see clearly, and he has no one to tell any of this to, the one person he would have told is the one who left. The line that runs through the song, “I cry forever, carrying my sorrow maruthe,” puts his grief into the wind itself, as if his weeping is something the breeze picks up and carries off into the distance, never settling, never ending. It’s a very Sinhala way of saying that sorrow this big doesn’t stay in one place, it follows you everywhere.

What makes the song land is how powerless he is. He isn’t angry and he isn’t begging her to come back. He just keeps repeating that he can’t make his heart understand, and he can’t carry the pain she handed him. Anyone who has loved someone who moved on to somebody else knows exactly this feeling, the mind that accepts it and the heart that refuses to, both at the same time.