Mage Hadawatha Hendina Gath Oba Lyrics by Kumarasiri Pathirana

You, who took my heart and held it close,
those words you said to me, I don’t want them.
Calling me your own, holding my hand,
you told me you loved me. I don’t want you now.

You wished to stay with me through saṃsāra (life after life),
you longed for that, you. I don’t want it.
If we ever meet again, face to face in some future,
don’t let us meet even by mistake.

I made myself ready to keep you safe,
the way a cobra guards a precious gem.
My eyes stayed fixed behind you, watching over you,
ready to protect you every single day.
But you were the one who didn’t want me.
Don’t come again just to look at me.
A prince was there in secret, one who was yours,
loving you, watching over you like that.

You doubted me, you pulled away from me,
yet I would still take you in, every time.
Calling you mine, holding you in my own heart,
in that love that bound me to you.
Behind my back, the world you built
snapped its strong branch and broke away.
So don’t come close to me again,
not until this life of mine is over.

A young man is speaking to the woman he loved, and the hurt in his voice is raw. She is the one who first took his heart, held his hand, called him her own and said she loved him. Now that she has left, he says it back to her in reverse: those same words, that same love, he doesn’t want any of it anymore. The word that keeps repeating, “epa,” is small but heavy in Sinhala. It means “I don’t want it,” “enough,” “stay away,” and he uses it like a door closing, again and again.

The ache underneath comes through in how high their dreams once were. They had promised to be together through saṃsāra, the Buddhist cycle of birth and rebirth, the deepest vow two Sri Lankan lovers can make, to find each other not just in this life but in every life to come. That is what makes his next line land so hard: now he asks that if they ever meet again in some future life, they shouldn’t meet at all, not even by accident. He is taking the most sacred promise they shared and turning it into the thing he most wants to avoid.

He also wants her to know how completely he had given himself to protecting her. He reaches for an old image, the cobra that coils around a precious gem and guards it with its life. In Sinhala lore the snake watching over a hidden jewel is the picture of fierce, total devotion, and that is how he watched over her, eyes always on her, ready to keep her safe every single day. The bitterness is that she didn’t want that guardian. And there was another man all along, a “prince” who loved her in secret, the rival who quietly won her.

By the end the betrayal is plain. While his back was turned, she built a whole world without him, and the strong branch they were standing on, the life they were supposed to share, snapped and broke away under him. What he is left holding is not anger so much as a tired, final kind of grief. He tells her to stay away from him now, for the rest of his life. The love hasn’t really died, that’s the cruel part. He has just decided he cannot survive being near it again.