Bageta Salun Dorin Ringa Lyrics by Damith Asanka

Slipping in sideways through the door with a bag,
hair styled and styled up,
flying off on Sundays from one boarding house and door to the next,
out hunting for the tuition girls.
Slipping in sideways through the door…

The tuition master too acts like he hasn’t seen a thing.

The tuition master too acts like he hasn’t seen a thing.
Moving from book to book of pirated notes,
since there’s a licence for it, dancing the jive away,
while the security guard keeps looking the other way.

Even when the corpse is given flowers, there’s no peace to be had.

Even when the corpse is given flowers, there’s no peace to be had.
Firing arrows one by one, one by one.
Set the learning aside and break the scholar to bits,
chasing after, sniffing out the tuition news.

This is a cheeky, tongue-in-cheek song about Sri Lanka’s tuition class culture, the after-school private classes that every student knows. Instead of celebrating study, it pokes fun at the boys who show up not to learn but to chase the girls in the class. The whole thing is meant to make you laugh, so read it with a grin rather than looking for heartbreak in it.

The picture it paints is instantly familiar to anyone who grew up here. A boy slides in sideways through the door with his bag, hair carefully done up, and on a free Sunday he is flitting from one tuition hall to the next. He is not after the lesson, he is after the “tuition girls.” The lyric winks at how the tuition master himself pretends not to notice the flirting going on right under his nose, and how the security guard at the gate looks the other way too. Everyone is in on the joke. Even the line about photocopied or pirated note books (“book to book”) and “dancing the jive” is a jab at how loose and unserious the whole scene has become, study turned into a social outing.

The Sinhala here leans on playful, exaggerated images that carry the comedy. “Firing arrows one by one” (hee widina) is the language of a hunter or of Cupid taking aim, the boy shooting his shot at one girl after another. “Set the learning aside and break the scholar” mocks the idea that real education is the last thing on anyone’s mind here. The odd, dark line about giving flowers to a corpse and still finding no peace is the kind of absurd, throwaway image these novelty songs love, a way of saying the whole effort is pointless and restless, no calm to be found in this chase.

What you are left with is a smile and a knowing nod. The song is not moralising or scolding, it is gently teasing a very real slice of Sri Lankan youth life, the open secret that tuition class is half schoolroom and half courtship. It works because everyone recognises the scene, the styled hair, the sideways slip through the door, the master looking away, and laughs at themselves a little.