Mata Oya Mage Pana Wagei Lyrics by Dilum & Sameera

You feel like my very life
Even when you’re not near, it’s as if you’re beside me
With the love that fills my heart
What you gave to me …. is love //

They say you’re like my life, that I can’t bear it
They say your smile is like the moon, that I can’t keep looking at it
They say the moon stole you away one night, that I can’t get my head around it
They say I can’t sleep

You feel like my very life ….

They say it’s you I want, that I can’t even say it out loud
They say it’s you I love, that I can’t go on without you
They say we laughed together that one time, that it’s me you see in your dreams at night
They say that dream is so beautiful

You feel like my very life ….

Without my knowing you come close to me, you take my hand and hold me close
With the love that fills my heart, what you gave to me …. is love

You feel like my very life …. //

A young man is so far gone over a girl that he can barely speak about it straight. He tells us she feels like his very life, and even when she is nowhere near, it is as though she is right beside him. That is where the song lives, in that warm, slightly dizzy place of new love where the person you have fallen for is always with you, even in their absence.

Listen and you will notice almost every line ends in “lu,” a little Sinhala word that means “so they say” or “apparently.” He is not stating his love flatly. He is reporting it, half shy, half teasing, as if the feeling is so big he can only talk about it the way you would pass on a rumour. “Apparently I can’t sleep. Apparently it’s her I want. Apparently I can’t even get the words out.” That softness is the whole charm of the song. He is admitting he has fallen, while pretending he is only the messenger.

The imagery is gentle and homely. He says her smile is like the moon, and in Sinhala song the moon is the image of a calm, cooling beauty, light that soothes rather than dazzles, so he is saying her smile settles him more than it excites him. Then he turns it into a small story: the moon stole her away one night, and he cannot make sense of it. It is his playful way of saying she has taken over his thoughts so completely that she even slips into the night, into the moon, into his sleeplessness. The dream he keeps having, where she comes to him without his knowing, takes his hand and holds him close, is the tenderest part of all. He cannot reach her in waking life, so his longing finishes the story for him while he sleeps.

By the end you are left with a very ordinary, very real ache, the kind so many of us know. He has handed her everything in his heart and called it simply “love,” and all he wants is to hold on to that one beautiful dream a little longer.