Tiken Tika Api Awada Me Tharam Dura Lyrics by Daddy

Little by little, little by little,
have we really come this far?
From mouth to mouth, from mouth to mouth,
the world came to know our story.
Time and again, time and again,
some of them made up tales about us.
One by one, one by one,
today we have won our own little world.

The tears we made our mothers shed,
and the sorrow our fathers hid away
in their soft hearts.

Standing in a corner, watching,
a handful of friends.
Before we go, in this tender moment,
a great sadness for the two of them.

A bundle of books, a bunch of flowers
in your hands today, a gold ring shining bright.
In the middle of the happy smile on your face,
I still cannot hold my thoughts together.
The truth of it, really,
I just can’t take it in.
Little by little, bit by bit,
have we come this far?
This far.
This far we came, from mouth to mouth, from mouth to mouth,
the world came to know our story.

Time and again, time and again,
some of them made up tales about us.
One by one, one by one,
today we have won our own little world.
mmm…

This is a song about reaching the end of a long road together and looking back at how far you have come. The voice is a “we,” a group of friends or classmates who started out as nobodies and slowly, step by step, made a name for themselves. The whole song is built on that phrase “tiken tika,” little by little, the small unnoticed steps that, added up, brought them all this way. It is the feeling you get at a graduation or a farewell, when you suddenly realize the years are gone and you are about to scatter.

The opening verses trace the climb. Word of mouth carried their name out into the world, people talked about them, some even invented stories, and “one by one” they kept going until “today we have won our own little world.” That last line is humble and proud at once. They did not conquer everything, just their own small world, the one that mattered to them, and that is enough.

Then the song turns soft and aches. It remembers the cost behind the success: the tears their mothers cried for them and the sorrow their fathers buried quietly in their hearts, because in Sri Lankan homes the father is the one who never shows his pain, he hides it. Now, at the moment of leaving, friends stand watching from a corner, and there is “a great sadness in this tender moment.” The bundle of books, the bunch of flowers, the gold ring shining on a finger, these are the small images of a graduation day or a wedding day, the markers of having arrived. Yet even surrounded by happy smiles, the singer admits he still cannot hold his thoughts together, cannot fully take it in that this chapter is really ending.

What the listener is left holding is that bittersweet ache of an ending you worked your whole life to reach. The success is real, the smiles are real, but underneath them is the quiet grief of parting, of breaking apart “binden binda,” bit by bit, after coming so far together. It is a song for anyone who has ever stood at the end of something good with friends and felt both proud and heartbroken at the same time.