Dura Atha Uwada Dakina (Gajaman Nona) Lyrics by Karunarathna Diwulgane

Though I am far away, do you still see me?
Aren’t you here, right beside me?
I am Elapatha Mudali,
Raise a little smile, Gajaman Nona.
Raise a little smile, Gajaman Nona.

Is the full moon ill, lying on a bed of shadow?
That moon-bright face is wet with tears.
Is even happiness forbidden to you, my lady?
This sorrow too is sweet, though it cuts into your heart.
Raise a little smile, Gajaman Nona.

Blending sweet as the taste of gold,
having drunk deep and savored every flavor of verse,
shall we not share it all in love?
Why this coldness, why this scorn?
Raise a little smile, Gajaman Nona.

This song reaches back to one of the best loved stories in Sinhala literary history, the verse courtship between Gajaman Nona, the celebrated poetess of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and Elapatha Mudali, a local nobleman who fell for her. In the song it is his voice we hear, a man writing to a woman he admires not only for her beauty but for her gift with words, coaxing her to soften toward him and give him even one small smile.

He opens by closing the distance between them. Though he may be far, he asks, doesn’t she feel him near, and he names himself plainly so she knows exactly who is speaking. That repeated line, “Raise a little smile, Gajaman Nona,” runs through the whole song like a gentle plea. He is not demanding anything grand, just the lift of a smile from a woman who seems weighed down.

The imagery is where the song shows its literary roots. When he says the full moon lies ill on a bed of shadow and that “moon-bright face is wet with tears,” he is using the moon the way Sinhala poetry always has, as the image of a beautiful, serene face. So a darkened, weeping moon means her lovely face is clouded with sadness, and he aches to see it bright again. Then he turns to taste and to verse: love that blends sweet “as the taste of gold,” and the line about having drunk and savored every flavor of poetry points straight at who Gajaman Nona was, a master of kavi, the art they both speak in. He is really saying that two people who share this love of words should not hold back from sharing love itself.

By the end his plea is almost tender frustration. He cannot understand the coldness and the scorn, when even her sorrow feels sweet to him. What lingers is the picture of a man courting not just a beautiful woman but a brilliant one, in her own language of verse, still hoping that all his careful words will earn him one smile.