Sihinayaki Mata Lyrics by Kasun Kalhara

Love is a dream to me
I feel it, all through my life
A life lived close to a dream
I feel it, your love

When the tears come, they burn
Fragrant flower petals, withered
Fragrant flower petals, withered
The rainy-season dream, kindled to life
A dream hidden, held fast in every breath
A dream hidden, held fast in every breath

Ah, ah, ah, beloved rainy season
Ah, ah, ah, beloved rainy season

A young man is turning his love over in his mind, and the first thing he reaches for is the word dream. To him love isn’t something solid he can hold, it’s a dream he carries through his whole life, something he feels rather than possesses. When he says he lives close to a dream, he means the person he loves stays just at the edge of his reach, near enough to feel, never quite his.

Then the song shifts, and you can hear the ache underneath the tenderness. The tears come and they burn, and he sets that against an image any Sri Lankan listener will catch at once: fragrant flower petals that have withered. In Sinhala song, sweet-smelling flowers stand for love at its freshest and most alive, so petals that have lost their scent and dried up are love that was once full of life and is now fading. Saying it twice makes the loss settle in.

The turn comes with the rainy season. He calls it the wassana, the season of rain, and he calls it beloved. In a tropical island the rains are not gloom, they are what brings everything back to green and bloom after the dry, parched months, so the rainy season here is the time love returns and grows again. He says this dream of love is kindled in that season and then hidden away, kept safe inside his very breath, in every sigh he takes. The dream isn’t gone, it lives where no one can see it, in the breathing of a man who can’t let it go.

What you’re left holding is gentle and a little sad at once. The flowers may have dried, but the dream is folded into his breath, and he keeps calling the season beloved, as if he’s still waiting for the rain to bring it all back to life.