Sudu Asu Pita Negala Lyrics by Indrani Perera

Riding in on a white horse,
seating me in the wedding chariot,
married under a golden pandol,
you take me away with you.
You, in a dream that leaves me dizzy,
and I am your little flower-arrow girl …//

It appears before me as if conjured from a dream,
and a sweetness spreads through my heart …//
Your love is mine alone, my dear //

Riding in on a white horse …/

The honey-flowers bloom because of the two of us,
the bees hum to send their flower-arrows flying,
what stays held in my eyes is your face alone,
what enchants me is the arrow of the god of love,
what I call dear is you, because you are mine //

Riding in on a white horse …//

You, in a dream that leaves me dizzy,
and I am your little flower-arrow girl …////

A young woman is lost in a daydream about her wedding day, and the whole song lives inside that dream. She pictures her beloved arriving on a white horse, lifting her into the wedding chariot, and the two of them being married under a golden pandol before he carries her away to a life together. None of it has happened yet. It is all imagined, and that is exactly what makes it so tender, the way new love runs ahead of itself and pictures the happy ending in full color.

The white horse and the wedding chariot are the old picture-book image of a groom coming to claim his bride, the kind of arrival a girl half-shyly hopes for. The golden thorana, the decorated pandol you stand under at a Sri Lankan wedding, is the moment the marriage becomes real and public. She strings these together not as plans but as a sweet, dizzy fantasy, and she even says so, calling him a dream that leaves her giddy. When she names herself his “malsara doni,” she is leaning on Mal Sara, the Sinhala god of love who shoots flowers as arrows, the way Cupid does. She is saying she is the girl his love has struck.

That flower-arrow image runs all through the second verse, and it is the heart of the song. The honey-flowers only bloom, she says, because the two of them are together. The bees hum as they fire their flower-arrows, the god of love’s arrow is what enchants her, and what fills her eyes is his face and nothing else. In Sinhala love poetry the bee drawn to the flower and Mal Sara’s flower-tipped arrows are the standing images of desire and being smitten, and she gathers them all to say one simple thing, that being near him makes the world bloom.

What you are left holding is the gentle ache of longing dressed up as joy. She is so sure of this love that she has already lived the wedding in her mind, and she closes the song right back where she started, on that white horse and that giddy dream, because she would happily stay inside it forever.