Sheela Lyrics by JayaSri

Sheela, at least through this song, come to know
the sorrow in my heart

Everywhere I look, like a dream,
your hidden shape drifts before my eyes
It floats on the breeze, it carries my song away
If you hear it, will you come, my lovely one?

My heart broke and fell apart, where are you going like this?
Don’t hurt this heart, this heart bound by love
How am I to stay so alone?
Won’t you come, my princess?

It’s as if the whole world has stopped, all gone quiet
Loneliness and emptiness burn in my heart
You speak to me through a phone call
and I sit here lost in thought in this lonely world

My heart broke and fell apart, where are you going like this?
Don’t hurt this heart, this heart bound by love
How am I to stay so alone?
Won’t you come, my princess?

When I come to my empty bed
your fragrance still reaches me
Even just to see your face in a dream,
will I be granted that wish?
Don’t let those beautiful eyes of yours
belong to someone else
Won’t you come, won’t you come, won’t you come, my princess?

My heart broke and fell apart, where are you going like this?
Don’t hurt this heart, this heart bound by love
How am I to stay so alone?
Won’t you come, my princess?

Sheela, Sheela, hey, Sheela, Sheela, ho (repeat 4 times)
Won’t you come, my princess?

A young man is in love with a girl named Sheela, and she has gone, leaving him alone with the kind of ache that does not fade. He is not even sure he can reach her with words, so he tries to reach her through the song itself. That is where it opens: he half hopes that if he cannot tell her how he feels, maybe this melody will, that she might at least come to know the sorrow sitting in his heart.

From there he slips into the way longing plays tricks on you. Everywhere he turns he sees her, not really there, just her shape drifting before his eyes like a dream. He imagines his song lifting onto the breeze and carrying his feelings to her, and he keeps asking the same quiet question, will she hear it, and if she does, will she come back. He calls her his princess, the soft, tender name a Sinhala lover reaches for, and he begs her not to keep wounding a heart that is already tied to her.

The loneliness deepens as the song goes on. The whole world feels like it has stopped and gone silent, and into that silence the only contact left is a voice down a phone line. He sits with that, turning it over, alone in a world that has shrunk to just him and his thoughts. The most aching image comes at the end, when he lies down on his empty bed and still catches her scent there. In Sinhala love songs that lingering fragrance, the suwanda, stands for a presence that the body remembers even after the person is gone, and here it is almost unbearable, the smell of someone who is no longer beside him.

By the close he is asking for so little, just to see her face once in a dream, and dreading the one thing he cannot stand, that those beautiful eyes might one day belong to someone else. When he chants her name over and over, Sheela, Sheela, it stops being a lyric and becomes the sound of someone calling into the dark for a person who may not be coming back. What you are left holding is that helpless, tender pleading, the hope that a song can do what he could not say to her face.