Ramalanaye Sanda

Having no claim to you,
I dreamed a dream,
yet I will not say that you are mine,
behind the veil that hides everything,
on a day my eyes were bound and closed,
the moon of Ramalanaya died

I seek a mirage that forms inside a dream,
in a fast that never found peace,
on the coldest night, the warmest tear,
I wake in the middle of the Sahara,
a heart that has never known love
is a harsh and stony earth,
friend, love is a part of faith itself

Where a long river flows without ever stopping,
in the cracked, broken valley,
there is a ground where the loveliest flowers bloom, the ground of love,
in heaven, in the garden of Eden,
the apple Adam never saw is there even now

A poetic, faith-touched love song about a love the singer knows he has no right to. He dreamed a dream, he says, but will not claim you are mine; and on a day his eyes were bound and closed, behind the veil that hides everything, the moon of Ramalanaya died. The dead moon is the image of a love, or a hope, put out before it could ever be spoken.

The imagery draws on devotion and the desert. He chases a mirage that forms inside a dream, in a fast that never found peace; on the coldest night he sheds the warmest tear and wakes alone in the middle of the Sahara. A heart that has never known love, he says, is a harsh and stony earth, and then the line that anchors the whole song: friend, love is a part of faith itself. Love for a person and faith in God are set side by side, as if they were made of the same thing.

The close reaches for paradise. Where a river flows endlessly through a cracked, broken valley, there is a ground where the loveliest flowers bloom, the ground of love; and in the garden of Eden, the apple Adam never saw is there even now. That untasted, forbidden fruit becomes the forbidden love the singer aches for. Sung by Dushani Madhushika, composed by Tharindu Damsara to words by Najath Akram, it is a lyrical song about a beautiful, forbidden love, mourned like a dead moon and dreamed of like an untouched paradise.