Kavikariye Sindu Kiyana Lande

Girl of the verses, you who sing the songs,
are you the koel of the night?
I’ll go quietly on my way, off I go,
evening has come down anyway.

Silver earrings in both ears,
a mark of kumkum red on your forehead,
playing the veena in time,
I came here after hearing the song you sang.
Playing the veena, singing your verses,
we walk the roads looking for a few rupees.

Girl of the verses…

Don’t go begging along the road,
stay here in my heart, lovely one.
This love, carried to me through saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth),
I place into your cupped hands.
My lord, my life, I don’t know, oh
my own mind has gone unsteady.

Girl of the verses…

A woman walks the road singing verses for coins, and a man who happened to be passing stops to listen. That is the whole situation of the song. He calls her kavikariye, the old word for a woman who made her living going village to village singing kavi, and by the time he says he really should be on his way, the evening has already come down and he still has not moved.

The first thing he reaches for is the koel. Asking whether she is the koel of the night is no small compliment in Sinhala song, because the koel’s call is the sound people wait for, the voice that carries across a whole village and stays in your head long after it stops. Then come the details you only notice when you are already caught: the silver earrings in both ears, the red kumkum on her forehead, the veena kept in time under the words. He came here following that sound, and he says so.

Her answer is the line that gives the song its ache. Playing the veena, singing verses, we go looking for rupees. Singing is her living, and the walking is not going to stop for one man on one evening. So he asks for the only thing that would stop it, that she leave the road and stay in his heart instead. The love he offers is not something that started tonight either. He says it was carried to him through saṃsāra, through lifetimes, and he hands it over the way you place something into a person’s cupped palms.

The last two lines are hers, and she does not say yes. She calls him the lord of her life, says she does not know, and admits her own mind has gone unsteady. That is where the song leaves them, a roadside singer who has to keep walking and a man asking her to stay, with the light already gone. Then the refrain comes back around and nothing has been settled, which is exactly why it lingers.