Akuru Meki Na Lyrics by Edward Jayakody

The letters haven’t faded, the pages haven’t come loose
The little drawings haven’t smudged

I still remember it just like before
the lessons in the old exercise book

Honey spills and trickles down to the ground
the head is full of bright kundumani seeds
Filling the whole quarter, scattering sweets
Kumudumathi smiles

Let’s run, let’s leap
let’s sing songs, let’s dance
Let’s cross over to the far bank
let’s set off and climb on our way

This is a song that goes back to childhood, to the small world of a village school and the games that filled it. There is no lover and no heartbreak here. The voice belongs to someone looking back fondly at the years of being a child, and the wonder of it is how clearly all of it has stayed with them.

It opens by picking up an old exercise book. The letters in it haven’t faded, the pages are still bound, the little doodles in the margins haven’t smudged. On the surface that is just a well kept book, but it stands for memory itself. The school lessons are still as fresh in the mind as they were back then. Nothing about those days has worn away, which is exactly the feeling the song is chasing.

Then the imagery turns sweet and a little dreamlike, the way a child remembers things. Honey spills and runs down to the ground, the head is full of kundumani, those tiny scarlet and black seeds that village children string into beads and play with. Sweets are scattered around the whole neighbourhood, and a girl named Kumudumathi is smiling. Her name carries the lotus in it (kumudu is the water lily), so even the name is gentle and pretty. Taken together it paints childhood as a place overflowing with sweetness and small treasures, where a handful of seeds and a smiling friend were riches enough.

The last verse is pure play. Let’s run, let’s jump, let’s sing and dance, let’s cross to the other side of the river and set off climbing. It is the open invitation of childhood, when an afternoon stretched out forever and the far bank of the stream was an adventure waiting to be had. The song leaves you holding that feeling, the lightness of a time when nothing had faded yet, and you could just run.