Andara Yaye Lyrics by Karunarathna Diwulgane

Father, strolling through the andara thicket along the bund,

To me the stream water is paddy field and lake,
the flowers in the trees and groves are all mine, father.

The drops of water gathered in the clouds
bring heavy rain down on the great earth.
The drops of water gathered in the clouds
bring heavy rain down on the great earth.
At the end of life’s journey, sitting on the mountain top,
a father’s love sways, trembling with tears.

At the very tops of the trees there are flowers and fruit,
the budding ones plucked once they have ripened.
At the very tops of the trees there are flowers and fruit,
the budding ones plucked once they have ripened.
I tied up those branches, undoing the sin of harming small creatures,
and built a perch so I could set things right.

This is a son’s tribute to his father and to the small rural world the two of them shared. It opens with a picture every village child in Sri Lanka would know: an old man walking slowly through a thicket of andara (a common thorny shrub) along the raised bund of a paddy field. That image of the father pacing the land sets the whole mood, gentle, unhurried, rooted in the soil.

The wonder of the song is how the child saw everything through the father’s care. The water of an ordinary little stream felt as grand as a paddy field and a whole lake, and the flowers in the trees and groves felt like his own treasure. None of it was actually his, but a father who gives a child the run of the land makes the child feel like the owner of the world. That is the feeling these lines carry.

Then the song reaches for a larger image to say what a father’s love is. Just as tiny drops of water collect quietly in the clouds and then come back as the heavy rain that feeds the great earth, the father’s love gathers over a whole life and pours down on those below him. The mountain top here is the height of that long journey, the father near the end of his days, looking back, and his love still “sways, trembling with tears.” It is the tenderness of an old man who has carried his family the way the clouds carry the rain for the fields.

The last verse turns to a small, telling memory. High in the treetops there is fruit and there are buds you wait to ripen before you pick, the everyday patience of country life. And there is a quiet act of conscience: the son ties up branches and builds a little perch, “undoing the sin of harming small creatures,” making a place of refuge to set right some harm once done. It is a small gesture, but it carries the gentleness the father taught him. What the listener is left holding is the warmth of a childhood spent close to the land and close to a father whose love, like the rain, asked for nothing and gave everything.