Usawiya Lyrics by Ishanka Jay

The court squeezed tight with cold,
the plaintiff’s dock crowded over with roses,
on a veena-string that played sorrow a thousand times,
the defendant’s dock died,
and my love-case was resolved

In a city of love, the clock’s mechanism
weeps in eyes and in hearts,
the letter-strings of a great tale strung together,
the past has gone mute,
in a silence where memory has fallen asleep,
I sit, unseen,
we are deluded, and my love-case is resolved

On a stranger judge’s seat,
a heart, all alone,
to love’s tender, precious dose
it grants a pause,
do not acquit me and set me free,
imprisoned in the jail of the heart,
we are deluded, and our love-case is resolved

An inventive heartbreak song that stages a lost love as a court trial. The courtroom is squeezed tight with cold; the plaintiff’s dock is smothered in roses, and, on a veena that has played sorrow a thousand times, the defendant’s dock dies. With that, the singer says, my love-case was resolved, the verdict on a love has come in, and it is grief.

The metaphor deepens into a whole city of love where even the clock weeps in eyes and hearts. The story of the relationship is strung together like lines of letters, but now the past has gone mute, and he sits unseen in a silence where memory has fallen asleep. The refrain, we are deluded, our love-case is resolved, repeats like a sentence handed down.

The close is the most poignant twist on the courtroom idea. Before a stranger judge, a lonely heart grants love’s tender, precious dose only a pause, a recess, not an end. And then the plea that inverts everything you expect: do not acquit me and set me free, leave me imprisoned in the jail of the heart. He would rather stay locked in this love than be released from it. Sung by Ishanka Jay to words by Shashika Diyamantha Samare, composed by Tharindu Damsara, it is a clever, sorrowful song that turns the end of a love into a trial where the heartbroken lover begs not to be freed.