Pudasunaka Nisala Bawa Lyrics by Dayan Witharana

If the love I gave had carried the stillness of an altar,
a heart would not be holding this many sighs.
Won’t you tell me, won’t you tell me,
why you gave such pain to the love we tied together?

Gathering the soft fragrance that lay over a lake of flowers,
going off to smile in peace beside someone else,
this weeping, this sorrow,
if only you knew, you would not hand me such anguish.

If the love I gave had carried the stillness of an altar …………

The blessing of a love as radiant as a moon of pure virtue,
offered in worship until it makes the heart pound with life,
if you would look at it with a tender heart,
if you would weigh it truly, you would not stay so far away.

If the love I gave had carried the stillness of an altar …………

A young man is hurting because the love he gave was something almost sacred to him, and the woman he gave it to has walked away. The whole song is built on the picture of a temple. He wishes his love had been as calm and untouched as the stillness of a pudasuna, the offering altar in a Buddhist shrine where flowers are laid in quiet devotion. If it had stayed that peaceful, he says, his heart would not be so full of sighs now. Instead, the love he treated as worship has left him in pain, and he keeps asking the one simple question that has no answer: why give pain to a love we promised each other?

The middle of the song hurts the most. He pictures her gathering the soft fragrance from a lake of flowers and going off to smile happily beside someone new, while he is left behind crying. The flowers and their scent are the same things you would offer at a shrine, so the image cuts two ways. The sweetness he once laid before her like an offering is now being carried off and enjoyed somewhere else. He is sure that if she really understood what she was doing to him, she would never cause this kind of anguish.

In the last verse he reaches for the highest image he has. He compares his love to the light of a sil sanda, the pure, gentle glow of the moon on a poya day of religious observance, the calmest and most blessed light a Sri Lankan can imagine. That is how he held her, as a blessing offered in devotion, so deeply that it made his heart pound just to be alive in it. All he asks is that she look at it honestly, with a tender heart. If she truly weighed how much that love was worth, he believes, she could never bring herself to stay this far away.

What stays with you is the quiet ache underneath the temple language. He is not angry. He is a man who loved someone the way a devotee loves at a shrine, with reverence and stillness, and he cannot understand how something he held that sacred could end in tears. The devotional imagery turns an ordinary heartbreak into something that feels almost holy, and that is exactly why it lands so hard.