Thaththage Suwanda

How father went away to protect the country,
how he would come back soon, bringing gifts,
I wrote it just the way grandma told me,
it is my very first essay, mother //

On father’s photograph, mother,
why did you put the white vatusudu-flower garland?
father’s scent and the flowers’ scent,
now they get a little tangled up for me

How father went away to protect the country,
how he would come back soon, bringing gifts,
I wrote it just the way grandma told me,
it is my very first essay, mother

So that everyone knows the brave things I do,
I will show my essay to father too,
mother, why are there so very many teardrops,
if father is going to come back to me soon?..

A quietly devastating song sung in the voice of a small child whose father, a soldier, has died, though the child does not understand it yet. Proudly, the child recounts my very first essay, written just the way grandma dictated: how father went away to protect the country and how he will come back soon, bringing gifts. The innocence of the retelling is what breaks the heart.

The first crack of doubt is a smell and a garland. On father’s photograph, the child asks, mother, why did you put the white vatusudu-flower garland?, the flowers used for the dead. And then the unbearably gentle line: father’s scent and the flowers’ scent, now they get a little tangled up for me. The child is only beginning to sense that something is wrong.

The last verse holds the whole tragedy in a child’s logic. Eager to make father proud, the child promises to show him the essay, so that everyone knows the brave things I do. And seeing the mother weep, the child asks the question that says everything the child cannot: mother, why are there so many teardrops, if father is going to come back to me soon? Sung by Harshana Disanayake to words by Admiral Somathilaka Disanayake, it is a heartbreaking song about a fallen soldier, told through the uncomprehending love of the child he left behind.