Kumariyak Wage Obata Lyrics by Clarence Wijewardena

(You have been given beauty like a princess,
but you have not been given the heart to give me even a hint of a smile…//)
You don’t know how to smile
you only get ready to take flight
where does that haughty look come from?

By the canal bank, on the dirt road,
along the fence, on the footpath,
every time you see me
oh, why do you glare at me so?
Can’t the two of us be in love now?

Like a princess, to you….

The moment you spot me from far away,
the way you walk off looking aside,
my time has still not come.
oh, isn’t it a sin to be this angry?
Why do you glare? Can’t we be together now?

(You have been given beauty like a princess,
but you have not been given the heart to give me even a hint of a smile…//)
(You don’t know how to smile
you only get ready to take flight
where does that haughty look come from?…//)

A young man has fallen for a girl who carries herself like royalty, and he can’t help teasing her about it. She is beautiful, no argument there, but for all that beauty she won’t spare him so much as a small smile, and the whole song is him half complaining, half flirting about it. The tone is light and playful, the kind of good natured grumbling you do about someone you are quietly crazy about.

He keeps running into her in the everyday places of village life, by the canal bank, on the dusty dirt road, along the fence, on the little footpath worn by people’s feet. These aren’t grand settings, they are the ordinary lanes where a boy and girl in the same village would cross paths again and again. And every single time, she gives him that cold, proud look and walks off with her face turned away, as if she is “getting ready to take flight,” too good to land near him. He calls her look “ahankara,” haughty, full of pride, and wonders aloud where a girl gets that much attitude.

The princess image is the heart of it. In Sinhala, comparing a girl to a “kumariya,” a princess, says she is lovely but also untouchable, raised above the ordinary, the sort of beauty you admire from a distance and can’t get close to. He turns that gently against her: God gave you the looks of a princess but forgot to give you the heart to smile at a regular fellow like me. There is a sweet, resigned line where he says “my time has still not come,” meaning he knows she isn’t ready, or isn’t interested yet, and he is willing to wait for his moment.

What makes the song so loved is how unbothered and warm it stays underneath the complaint. He scolds her for glaring, asks if being this angry isn’t a small sin, and keeps circling back to the same simple plea, why can’t the two of us just be in love now? It is the harmless, hopeful pestering of first attraction, a boy who has decided on a girl who hasn’t decided on him yet, and is happy to keep showing up on the same dirt road until she does.