Owath Wedada Malli Owath Wedada Lyrics by Gypsies

Listen up, take it in, I won’t tell you any lies
I roamed the whole world over, leaving my mark in every place
I came back home to my own land, and saw
that once these folks found out my true worth
they kept on going, telling me not to stop

Is even that a job, little brother, is that even work?
Is doing a king’s task such a big deal, are you some royal stock?
After thinking and weighing it all up, you fool with the rattled head,
go tell those swollen-headed types all of this

That great terrorist who put the whole world in fear
George Bush is begging me, “Help me catch Bin Laden”
He’s telling me, “Go grab him and hand him over”
But I don’t know the first thing about international affairs
so I told him no

In the city of Hollywood I met the queen of actresses
“Leave that Sunil of yours back in America and marry me,”
Julia kept saying, chasing after me
But if the missus at home found out, that’s seven funerals’ worth of trouble
so I told her no

Madonna, the most famous singer in the whole world
“You simply must sing a duet with me,” she said
and came running after me for days on end
But oh, our Lankan singers would get jealous if I did that
so I told her no

“Bring the World Cup home to Lanka,”
Sunil says, fighting with Whatmore, “you’ve got to come”
Sanath was begging me today, again and again
But coaching is no simple thing, there’s all that mess inside the board
so I told her, I mean, I told them no

This is a comedy song, one of the cheeky novelty numbers Gypsies are loved for, and the whole joke is a small-town big-mouth bragging about all the famous people in the world who supposedly came begging for his help. He insists, with a straight face, that he is so important and so in demand that he keeps having to turn the world’s biggest names down.

The setup is a fellow who claims he has travelled the globe and “left his mark” everywhere, and now that he is back home everyone knows his true worth. From there the verses are a string of tall tales, each one funnier and more impossible than the last, and each ending with the same punchline, “so I told them no.” George Bush himself supposedly pleads with him to go catch Osama Bin Laden, and he turns it down because, well, he doesn’t really follow international politics. Julia Roberts, “the queen of actresses,” begs him in Hollywood to ditch her partner and marry him, and he declines only because his wife back home would raise seven funerals’ worth of hell if she found out. Madonna chases him for days wanting a duet, and he says no so the local Sri Lankan singers won’t get jealous of him.

The references are all very much of their moment, which is part of the charm. “Sunil” winks at Sunil Perera, the band’s own frontman, so the song is half teasing itself. The last verse drops into cricket, the national obsession: Sanath Jayasuriya and the board are supposedly pleading with him to come coach the team and bring home the World Cup, while quarrelling with the real coach Dav Whatmore, and he begs off because of all the “kachal,” the politics and mess, inside the cricket board. That line is the sharpest, a little dig at how tangled and political Sri Lankan cricket administration really was.

There is also a running joke aimed at the “konde badapu” crowd, the stuck-up, swollen-headed types who think too much of themselves, and the chorus mocks them with “is that even a job, are you royalty?” The fun of the song is the gap between this nobody’s wild claims and the obvious truth that none of it happened. It is pure Sri Lankan musical comedy: self-deprecating, poking at celebrity worship and at our own national pride about cricket, and built entirely on the bravado of a man who can apparently say no to anyone, because of course none of them ever actually asked.