Dekopul Kandulin Thema (Ama Theme) Lyrics by Lahiru Perera

Ahhh ha… ha…

My two cheeks wet with tears,
laid against your lips and forehead,
did I leave after kissing your head,
caught up in it deep in the night?
My love… ohh hoo…

Before this, two like us
must have parted this same way.
Somewhere along the bank of this river of tears,
my life broke into sobs.
Your eyes search for it again and again.
The way we wished, we end up apart.

I am the one inside your heart,
you are the one inside mine,
yet we are not meant to come close, my love…

My two cheeks wet with tears,
laid against your lips and forehead,
did I leave after kissing your head,
caught up in it deep in the night?
My love… ohh hoo…

Like soft white flower petals,
we were bound to fall away.
Giving off a gentle fragrance,
the two of us bloomed.

Meeting was not love,
parting only made the love grow.
The way we wished, we end up apart.

I am the one inside your dreams,
you are the one inside mine,
but this is not the waking world, my love…

A young man is saying goodbye to the woman he loves, and the whole song happens in that last, aching moment between two people who know they cannot stay together. He calls her suhadiniye, a tender word for “my dear, my love,” and everything he says is spoken straight to her, quietly, in the dark.

The opening image sets the mood. His cheeks are wet with tears as he leans his face against her lips and forehead and kisses her head before leaving, late in the night, too caught up in the feeling to pull away. He keeps reaching for comfort in the thought that they are not the first. Other lovers before them, he tells himself, must have had to part in just this same way, as if knowing it has happened to others might make his own loss easier to bear.

The river of tears is the heart of the song. He pictures all their crying as a flowing ganga, a river, and somewhere along its bank his own life simply broke down into sobs. It is a very Sinhala way of carrying grief, turning a private flood of tears into a whole landscape you can stand beside. He notices her eyes still searching, again and again, for the love they had, and he answers with the line the song keeps returning to: the way we wished, we end up apart. What they wanted and what they got are opposites, and he says it plainly instead of fighting it.

Then comes the gentlest image of all. He compares the two of them to soft white flower petals that were always going to fall, and to a quiet fragrance the two of them gave off as they bloomed together. White petals stand for something pure and fragile, and a flower’s scent for a love that is real but cannot be held, beautiful while it lasts and then gone on the air. From this he reaches the thought that hurts the most: meeting was not the love, the parting is what made the love grow. The distance is what shows him how much it mattered.

He ends still close to her, but only in a place that does not count. I live inside your heart and you live inside mine, he says, yet we are not meant to come near. I live inside your dreams and you in mine, but this is not the waking world. They belong to each other completely in feeling and in dreams, and nowhere they can actually touch. That is what the listener is left holding, two people who are everything to each other and still have to walk away.