Suwanda Thiya Ma Langa Oba Lyrics by Chandana Liyanarachchi

Leave the fragrance with me, take the flowers and go
Your eyes are blue water lilies, your face a red lily
Your eyes are blue water lilies, your face a red lily
Your smile like buds about to bloom

Somewhere under this sky,
if you are still out there,
I will keep that fragrance with me
until you come back to me again

Kings and ministers and rich men
buy their fine spring robes with money
But tell me, where but in you
are there flowers no price can ever buy

Leave the fragrance with me, take the flowers and go

A young man is letting the girl he loves go, but he asks her to leave one thing behind. Take the flowers, he says, just leave their fragrance with me. That single line carries the whole song. The flowers are her, her presence, the days they had together, and the fragrance is the memory and the feeling of her that he wants to keep close even after she is gone.

He paints her the way Sinhala love poetry always reaches for, in the language of flowers. Her eyes are nil upul, the blue water lily, the classic image of cool, calm, lovely eyes. Her face is the red lily, soft and bright. Her smile is like buds just beginning to open, young and fresh. He is not just describing her looks, he is saying she is made of the same beauty as the most loved flowers in the land.

Then the ache turns into a quiet promise. Somewhere under this same sky, if she is still living and breathing out there, he will wait, holding on to her fragrance, until the day she comes back to him. It is the patient, hopeful kind of longing, not anger or blame, just a heart that refuses to let go.

The last verse is where he says what she really means to him. Kings and ministers and wealthy men can buy the finest spring clothes with their money. But the flower that is her, the love she gave, no amount of money can ever buy. She is the one priceless thing in a world where everything else has a price, and that is why, even as he sends her away, he begs to keep her scent.