Sandawata Ran Tharu Lyrics by CT Fernando

When I came, hungry, into my son’s house,
to his wife
I looked like a witch…
Yet out of a mother’s love, the blood in my body turned to milk for him.
Whether I am your mother or your wife, which one means more to you?

May golden stars and the moon bloom like flower buds.
May clouds drape the sun like a shawl.
May gems and pearls be born from the earth.
May a son come to know his mother’s worth.

The weight a river carries, is it not the water and the sand?
The strength a desert holds, is it not the white sand?
(The beauty a young woman has, is it not her good character?
The happiness a mother has, is it not the happiness of her child?)

When there is no fire, where would smoke come from?
When there is no dew, where would the wetness come from?
(When there is no roof, how can there be a house?
When there is no mother, how can there be a homeland?)

May golden stars and the moon bloom like flower buds…

This is a song in praise of a mother, sung in her own voice. The mother speaks first, remembering how she once came hungry to her grown son’s house and how his young wife looked at her as if she were a witch, an unwanted, ugly thing at the door. Against that coldness she sets a quiet truth: out of pure love for her child, the very blood in her body once turned into milk to feed him. Then she puts the gentle question that the whole song turns on, asking her son which one truly weighs more in his heart, his mother or his wife.

From there the song opens into a string of blessings. Golden stars and the moon are wished to “bloom like flower buds,” clouds are wished to drape over the harsh sun like a soft shawl, and gems and pearls are wished to rise out of the earth. These are images of something tender softening something hard, the cool moon and the shading cloud easing a fierce light, the same way a mother’s care eases the hardness of the world. And after all those wishes for the sky and the earth, the real wish lands plainly: that a son should one day come to understand what his mother is worth.

The last verses make the argument the way old Sinhala verse loves to, by asking simple questions whose answers everyone already knows. What gives a river its weight? The water and the sand it carries. What gives a desert its strength? Its white sand. What makes a young woman truly lovely? Her good character, not just her looks. And what is a mother’s happiness? Only the happiness of her child. Then the final turn: there is no smoke without fire, no wetness without the morning dew, no house without a roof, and in the same breath, no country without a mother. The mother becomes the roof over everything, the one without whom nothing else can stand.

What the listener is left holding is simple and heavy at once. A mother gives until her own blood becomes her child’s food, and she asks for almost nothing back, only that her child, one day, might see her clearly and know her worth before it is too late.