Api Raga Wayanawa Lyrics by Bhadraji Mahinda JayathilakaClarence Wijewardena

We play music, we dance the baila
On a whim, on a full-moon day, we even take the sil vows
We give to charity, and we eat meat and fish
We listen to the dhamma, and on a whim we tell lies too…..//

We’re only human, we’re human after all
(We didn’t come down
from heavenly mansions,
descending out of the four corners of the sky//)

We pick fights, and we run around chasing peace
When we see we’ve done wrong, we bow our heads
We enjoy comforts, while some endure hardship
Both jealousy and anger, we know them well….

We’re only human…

We love, and in between we hate
We fall by day into the pit we dug in the dark
We have our stubborn streak, and when the mood takes us we pull the rope tight
Our necks get cut, and for that there’s medicine too….

We’re only human, we’re human after all
(The sun and the moon rise
and our world keeps turning
only because of feelings like these in people……//)

This is a wry, clear-eyed song about being human, with all the contradictions that come with it. There is no lover and no heartbreak here. The voice is “we,” ordinary people looking honestly at ourselves, and the whole song is a list of the opposite things we do, often on the very same day, without seeing any conflict in it.

The opening verse sets the tone with gentle irony. We play music and dance the baila, and then on a whim, when a full-moon Poya day comes around, we put on white and take the sil vows at the temple. We give alms to the needy, yet we also eat meat and fish. We sit and listen to the Buddha’s teaching, and the moment it suits us, we tell a lie. None of this is meant as harsh judgment. The repeated line “minissune, api minissune” (“we’re human, we’re only human after all”) is the song’s heartbeat, a kind of forgiving shrug. We didn’t drop down from some heavenly mansion, perfect and pure, arriving out of the four corners of the sky. We are earthbound creatures, and being mixed and inconsistent is simply what that means.

The middle verses keep turning over the same coin. We start quarrels, then run around looking for peace. We hurt someone and then bow our heads in apology. Some of us live in comfort while others carry real suffering, and jealousy and anger are emotions every one of us knows from the inside. The lines lean on a few homely Sinhala images. “Andure wetunu wale dawal watenawa,” falling by daylight into the pit we ourselves dug in the dark, is a everyday way of saying we trip over our own past mistakes, the traps we set without thinking come back to catch us. “Hithunama lanuth adinawa,” pulling the rope tight when the mood takes us, paints the stubbornness and spite we are all capable of, and “belith kepenawa, ewata beheth thiyenawa” follows it with comfort: even when we cut ourselves, even for the harm we do, there is a remedy. Nothing about us is beyond repair.

The song closes on something almost tender. The sun and the moon go on rising, and this whole world of ours keeps turning, precisely because of these human feelings, the love and the hate, the kindness and the pettiness all tangled together. Rather than scold us for our flaws, the song accepts them as the very thing that makes life move. It leaves you with a soft, knowing smile at yourself and everyone around you, a reminder that to be this contradictory is not a failure. It is just what it is to be human.