Kassata Kos Ata Lyrics by Lahiru Perera

Even if it’s a jackfruit seed thrown at the crow, the king coconut still falls
Don’t take an umbrella out into the rain and stay dry
When it’s hot, vinegar tastes good going down

Hiding jaggery away inside the drain
Then bawling your nose off over the jaggery that’s gone
Once your luck has run off, don’t go covering the cracks

In the heat they drink iced toddy, white man
Eat two myrobalan petals and your belly turns to mush
Looking for the love that gets lost in your Bermuda shorts
Let’s sell ourselves to the devils, we’ve still got commissions coming

Putting on sunglasses and staring all around
Saying the rains are coming any day now
Don’t go pulling your washing in out of the sun

Listening to old man Mahadana’s advice
Taking the goat and slitting it at the neck
Don’t go asking the king of Kekille for a verdict

Gm .. .. F .. .. Eb x2

Telling the world all about Shakespeare
Watching a play like Mr. Bean’s
Don’t go out in the evening and curse at the lady

Pointing your finger at the ruin of the world
Holding the whole world in the lines of your palm
Don’t go writing your life around Saturn’s bad spell

This is a comic novelty song, the kind that’s all wink and nonsense, and the joke is right there in its shape. It’s built like one of those solemn songs that hand out life advice, except every piece of advice it gives is either absurd, useless, or a Sri Lankan proverb twisted on its head. The voice is a cheeky one, mock-serious, the friend at the table who keeps “advising” you with a perfectly straight face while everyone knows he’s pulling your leg.

To feel why it’s funny you have to hear the old sayings underneath it. “Kassata kos ata,” throwing a jackfruit seed at a crow, is a proverb for doing something clumsy and pointless, and the song opens by happily mangling it. Then there’s the line about hiding jaggery (the lumps of palm sugar) down a drain and then sobbing over it once it’s gone, the very picture of a fool who creates his own loss. “Mahadana Muththa” is a beloved figure from Sinhala folklore, an old man famous for dispensing confident, completely wrong wisdom, so “listening to Mahadana’s advice” is shorthand for trusting an idiot. The same goes for the “king of Kekille,” the proverbial ruler whose judgments are so backwards that to this day a senseless ruling is called a “Kekille verdict.” Asking him for a verdict is asking for nonsense on purpose.

The humour keeps colliding the village and the modern world, which is half the charm. One minute it’s toddy and myrobalan (the bitter herbal fruit that’s good for your stomach but here just turns your belly to mush), the next it’s Bermuda shorts, lost “love,” sunglasses, Shakespeare and Mr. Bean. The “epa” refrain that ends each verse literally means “don’t,” the grammar of every earnest moral song, so the singer keeps gravely instructing you not to do things no sane person would do anyway: don’t pull your washing out of the sun, don’t curse at the lady on your evening walk, don’t pin your whole life on “Senasuru apale,” the dreaded run of bad luck that Sri Lankan astrology blames on the planet Saturn.

There’s no broken heart here and no hidden depth to chase, and trying to find one would miss the point. It’s a song that laughs at fortune-tellers, fake gurus, proverb-spouting know-it-alls and our own small superstitions, and invites you to laugh along. The pleasure is in recognizing every saying it flips and grinning at how seriously it pretends to mean it.