Yan Yan Yan Pawi Pawi

Will your love be mine?
Aren’t I the one who gives you peace?
The arrows of love drift through the air, that sweetness raining down
The shadow of love in my eyes…

Let’s float, float, float away
Far off, beautiful flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers
To a dream world, blue, blue, blue, blue
To look into your eyes, love, love, love, love
I came to tell you a secret
I came searching for you

May we find peace in this life
May love draw closer still
Glowing like the colour of gold, bathed in love
In paradise there is no pain… none….

Let’s float, float, float away…

A young man is reaching out to the girl he loves, half asking, half hoping, that her love will be his and that he is the one who brings her peace. The song begins with that gentle uncertainty, the question love always asks at the start, before it carries him off into a daydream of the two of them together.

The whole song floats, and that is the point. The refrain “yan yan yan pavi pavi” is the sound of drifting, lifting off the ground and sailing away, the way new love makes you feel like your feet barely touch the earth. He pictures flowers far in the distance, a dream world washed in blue, and himself flying there just to look into her eyes and whisper a secret. When the lyric speaks of “malsare,” the arrows of love, it reaches for Mal Sara, the Sinhala god of desire whose flower-tipped arrows make people fall in love, our version of Cupid. So when he says those arrows drift through the air and their sweetness rains down on him, he is saying he has been struck, and the feeling is settling over him like soft rain.

From there the song turns into a wish. He prays that they will find peace in this life and that love will keep pulling them closer. The image of glowing “like the colour of gold” and being “bathed in love” is the warmth of a love that feels rich and complete, and “paradise” with no pain is the simple dream at the heart of it, a life beside her where nothing hurts.

What you are left holding is the lightness of early love itself, the floating feeling, the bright colours, the quiet prayer that this will last. It is not a song of heartbreak but of hope, a young heart drifting toward someone and asking, softly, to be allowed to stay.