Irata Akikaru Lyrics by Indrani Perera

Stubborn against the sun, stubborn in the heart
A red bud in the rose grove
Ah… ah ha ha…
Ah… ha ha ha…

Once upon a time, from some far country he will come
He will take you away with him, far from here
By the Kaduleli river, crouching low and watching
By the Kaduleli river, crouching low and watching
A red bud in the rose grove

To sing the song that bursts to the lips
To let fall the tears that tremble in the eyes
May a beautiful day come to meet us tomorrow
May a beautiful day come to meet us tomorrow
A red bud in the rose grove

This is a tender song addressed to a little girl, sung in the voice of someone who loves her and watches her grow, a mother or an older woman of the household. She calls the child a red rosebud in a rose grove, and that single image carries the whole song. A bud is a flower not yet open, all its blooming still ahead of it, so the name is a gentle way of saying the girl is young, fresh, and full of a future no one has seen yet. The opening line calls her stubborn against the sun and stubborn at heart, the kind of spirited, headstrong child who will not be told what to do, said with fondness rather than complaint.

Then the singer lets her imagination run forward into the girl’s life. She borrows the storybook phrase Sri Lankan children grow up on, ekamath eka rata, once upon a time, in a faraway land, and uses it to picture the day a young man arrives from somewhere far off and carries the girl away with him. For a Sri Lankan listener this is the quiet picture of marriage, the daughter leaving the home she was raised in to begin a new life elsewhere. The river scene, watching low and hidden by the Kaduleli river, has the feel of an old memory or a daydream, the small private moments of a childhood that will one day be gone.

That is where the ache lives. The same breath holds a song rising to the lips and tears trembling in the eyes, the exact mix every parent knows when they think of a child leaving, happiness and loss arriving together and neither one cancelling the other. The singer does not pretend the parting away will not hurt. She only turns it into a wish, that when tomorrow comes and the girl is grown and gone, it will be a beautiful day. It is the prayer of someone who knows she cannot keep the bud from opening, and so blesses it instead, hoping the life ahead of this stubborn little rose will be a kind one.