Gahaka Mal Pipila Lyrics by Karunarathna Diwulgane

Why a flower blooms on a tree, I do not know
Why a flower blooms in a heart, I do not know
Why my heart became tied to you, I still do not know
The reason my heart is bound to you, I am still searching for

In the desert the grains of sand
love the sun, bound to it by the law of the world
The desert that burns longs for the sweet rain
and loves it like its own life
A wondrous love the world cannot see,
lovely just like that,
a forbidden thing I cannot have

A flower blooms on a tree …

Though the glowing studded stars
show their love to the moon forever,
can there not be one single star
that loves the sun instead?
This love of mine that you cannot feel
is lovely just like that,
and if it were you, you would be amazed

A flower blooms on a tree …

A young man is in love with someone who does not even know it, and he begins by admitting he cannot explain his own feeling. He compares it to a flower opening on a tree. Nobody decides when that happens, it just blooms. In the same way a flower has bloomed in his heart, and he says plainly that he does not know why, and that he is still searching for the reason his heart got tied to her. There is something honest and gentle in that opening. He is not boasting about his love, he is puzzled by it.

The heart of the song is in two images drawn from nature, both about loving something far above you that can never love you back, and yet the love being real and beautiful anyway. First he points to the desert. The grains of sand love the sun, he says, bound to it by the law of the world, and the burning desert still longs for the sweet rain and loves it like its own life. The desert and the sun, the desert and the rain, these are loves that ask for nothing in return. The sand can never reach the sun, the parched desert only gets rain now and then, but the longing is constant and true. He calls it a wondrous love the world cannot see, a forbidden thing he cannot have. That is how he sees his own feeling for her.

Then he turns to the sky. All the bright stars show their love to the moon, that is the natural pairing, stars and moon together in the night. But he asks, can there not be just one star that loves the sun instead? He is that one star. Everyone else loves what is easy and expected, but his heart has fixed itself on something it can never be near, the sun that only comes out when the stars are gone. The quiet ache here is that the two can never share the same sky.

What he is left holding is a love that the other person cannot even feel, and he knows it. He keeps repeating that it is lovely just the same, manaram, and he tells her that if she were ever in his place, feeling what he feels, she would be amazed by it. There is no anger and no demand in the song, only the soft wonder of carrying a love that is beautiful precisely because it expects nothing back.