Ipadi Lowe (Sinaha Kandulu)

Film: Mamai Raja (1989)

Laughter and tears, they come… and they go…

Born into the world, at this lodging house
a man acts out his part on the stage…
From one birth to the next, ours is only a pause
the time is short, this life of ours…
Laughter and tears, they come… and they go…
From one birth to the next, ours is only a pause
the time is short, this life of ours…
Born into the world, at this lodging house
a man acts out his part on the stage…

On this dream of a journey, the place we stop and rest
is only an ambalama (a wayside shelter) on the road….
In this lonely wilderness you and I have met
and this is the road we have to walk….
Listen, my friend, the world turns into a stage
and we are the actors in an illusion…

From one birth to the next, ours is only a pause
the time is short, this life of ours…
Born into the world, at this lodging house
a man acts out his part on the stage…

Never let the light of the lamp die out, my friend
never let go of these joined hands…
Your name will keep shining, always
like the sun in the sky…
To win one day, defeat itself must be defeated
here on this stage of a world…

(From one birth to the next, ours is only a pause
the time is short, this life of ours…
Born into the world, at this lodging house
a man acts out his part on the stage…
Laughter and tears, they come… and they go…)

This is a song about how short life is and how little of it we actually own, written by Hemasiri Halpita for the 1989 film Mamai Raja with music by Sarath De Alwis. There is no lover in it and no heartbreak. It is one person talking to a friend on a long road, and the first thing he says is the thing everyone already knows but forgets: laughter and tears come, and then they go. Neither one stays.

The word that carries the whole song is ambalama. On the old roads of Sri Lanka these were open shelters, a roof on pillars, built for travellers to rest a night before walking on the next morning. Nobody owned an ambalama and nobody stayed. Calling the world a lodging house and this life a stop at an ambalama tells a Sri Lankan listener everything in one image. You did not buy this place, you are not settling here, you are resting.

The second image sits underneath it in Buddhist terms. Bhavayen bhave, from one existence to the next, and in between them our life is only a viraame, a pause, an interval. So the man on the stage is not a metaphor for pretending. In samsara, the round of birth after birth, every life is a role you put on and hand back, and the song calls us actors in an illusion. What feels enormous while you are inside it is a scene that ends when the lights go down.

Then the last verse turns, and this is what saves the song from being bleak. Keep the lamp burning, he says, and never let go of these hands we have joined. Two strangers met in a lonely stretch of road and now they walk it together, so hold on. Your name will keep its light like the sun does. The line that lands hardest is the one about winning: before you can win, the losing in you has to lose. Give up on giving up, and then the stage is worth walking onto.

What you are left holding is a strange kind of comfort. Yes, it is brief, yes, it is borrowed, yes, we are only playing parts. Walk it well anyway, and walk it with someone.