Mata Rawana Lyrics by La Signore (Lahiru Perera)

I was deceived… there among the faces
you appeared… like out of a corner
Was it you who wet my lips’ petals?
That song never saw its ending
My whole purpose rested beside you
A single breath beside you, and a day slipped away

The song I lifted up high,
every note that rose carried my heart
Into that breath you blended in
The eyes never closed

I was deceived…

The moon hung heavy in the night sky
You fell here, at my feet, at the foot of this step
In the picture a painter drew
it was you who was there

I was deceived…

A young man looks back on a love that turned out to be an illusion, and the very first words give the ending away. “Mata rawana” means “I was deceived,” and he says it the way you say something out loud once you finally understand it. She appeared out of nowhere, almost out of the corner of his eye, one face among many, and somehow that one face was the one that undid him.

The song moves between two feelings at once, the sweetness of what he felt and the quiet knowledge that none of it was real. When he asks whether it was really her who wet the petals of his lips, he is reaching for the memory of a kiss, of closeness, and wondering if even that was true. The line about a single breath beside her and a whole day slipping away is the feeling of love bending time, of hours passing in a moment because you are with the person you want to be with. He had built his whole purpose around her, and that is exactly why the deception cuts so deep.

The imagery here is gentle and a little haunting. He says every note of the song he sang carried his heart, and that her breath got mixed into his own breath, so that even his singing and his breathing were no longer fully his. The eyes that never close are eyes that cannot look away, the way you keep watching someone you love even when you should stop. Then comes the picture of the moon hanging heavy over the night sky and the woman falling at his feet, at the foot of a step. In Sinhala song the moon is the standing image of calm, cooling beauty, a face lit soft in the dark, so a heavy, weighed-down moon tells you the beauty itself has turned sorrowful.

The last image is the saddest and the clearest. He says that in a picture some painter drew, it was her who was there all along. The whole love, in the end, was like a painting, something beautiful to look at but not alive, a likeness of love rather than the real thing. That is the deception he keeps naming. He was never holding a person, only an image of one, and the ache the listener is left with is the quiet shock of realizing that the most real thing you ever felt was painted on.