Muthu Muthu Wasse

Alone under a silk umbrella in the pearl-drop rain,
my white pearl, where are you going, dressed up like that?
You are getting soaked out there, so why stand smiling?
Come, let us hurry, the two of us tucked under one umbrella…..

Why sit alone in that empty drizzle, just watching?
Tell me, who is it you are offering your love to?
The heartache I was given long ago, in her world,
has never faded from my memory, I carry it in my heart…..

In the pearl-drop rain….

All my life I will stay in your world,
night and day, in sorrow and in joy, I will stay and not go away.
To spend my days alone like this is all I ask for,
I cannot accept love, I will not be fooled again…..

In the pearl-drop rain….

It starts as a light, teasing moment in the rain. A young man sees a girl standing on her own under a silk umbrella, dressed up and going somewhere, and he calls out to her: why are you letting yourself get soaked, why are you smiling out there alone, come and hide under one umbrella with me. Anyone who has waited out a Colombo downpour knows the picture at once.

The song then moves between two voices, a woman and a man answering each other, and the mood changes. She asks him why he sits alone in the drizzle, staring at nothing, and who he is giving his love to. His answer is the hurt of it. A long time ago, in the world of another woman, he was wounded, and the memory has not gone anywhere. He still keeps it. She offers him everything she has, saying she will stay in his world for the rest of her life, through sorrow and joy, and never walk away. He turns her down. He would rather go on alone than be fooled a second time.

The images carry a lot of this. Muthu muthu wasse describes fine rain falling in drops like pearls, a soft, pretty rain rather than a storm, and it sets the flirtation of the opening. Calling her sudu muthu menike, my white pearl, is the way a Sinhala song says a girl is precious and rare without saying anything so plain as beautiful. The umbrella is the real heart of it. Sharing one umbrella in a Sri Lankan song means closeness, two people pressed together with the rest of the street shut out, and it is an invitation more than a favour. When she asks who he offers his love to, the word used is pudanne, the word for placing an offering at a shrine, so love here is something laid down at someone’s feet, given up rather than traded.

By the end the same rain has turned. What was a playful shower in the first verse becomes the paluwe vehi beerame, the lonely drizzle a man sits in without moving, and the one umbrella he was so keen to share is the thing he now refuses. That is what makes the song ache. She is ready to give her whole life to him, and the reason he says no has nothing to do with her.