Lassana Rosa Malak Lyrics by MS Fernando

A beautiful rose is not beautiful to me
A beautiful butterfly is not beautiful to me
Nothing beautiful is beautiful to me
It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t beautiful
There is nothing like you, my loving one
There is nothing like you, my loving one

Blue gems lie there, a city full of gems
Pearls lie there, all of equal worth
Jewels made of gold, set with garnet

None of it is worth anything to me
What pleases my heart is here, my dear love is here
Gems and pearls and gold cannot comfort me or please me
The flowing river of love and longing, my heart cannot hold it back
None of it is worth anything to me, what pleases my heart
My dear love is here

The koel’s sweet song turned even sweeter
The land grew beautiful, none of it is worth anything to me
What pleases my heart, my dear love is here
Even your fair face has never spoken to me in sorrow or in anger
I am yours and you are mine, my heart will never be parted from you
None of it is worth anything to me, what pleases my heart
My dear love is here

A young man is so taken with the woman he loves that nothing else in the world looks beautiful to him anymore. That is where the song begins. A rose, a butterfly, anything people normally call lovely, he looks at it and feels nothing, because next to her it all goes plain. When he says “there is nothing like you, my loving one,” he means it the simplest way possible: she is the only beautiful thing left for him.

Then he turns to riches to make the point even stronger. He pictures a whole city of blue gems, pearls all of equal worth, gold worked with garnet stones. In Sinhala love songs treasure like this stands for everything the world counts as valuable. And his answer is that none of it touches him. Gems and pearls and gold cannot comfort his heart or bring it joy, because the one thing his heart actually wants is already here, sitting beside him. The line about the river of love that his heart cannot hold back is the giveaway: his feeling keeps rising and spilling over, the way a river in flood pushes past anything you put in its path.

He reaches for the koel, the bird whose call every Sri Lankan knows from the warm season, and says that since he met her even its sweet song sounds sweeter and the whole land looks more beautiful. Love has changed how the world sounds and looks to him. Yet even that beauty, he says, is worth nothing next to her. The tenderest moment comes near the end, where he notes that her fair face has never once spoken to him in sorrow or in anger. There has been no quarrel between them, no hurt, and that gentleness is part of why he holds her above gems and gold.

By the close he settles into the quietest promise the song has: I am yours and you are mine, and my heart will never be parted from you. Everything he listed and dismissed, the flowers, the jewels, the birdsong, was only there to clear the ground for this. What he is left holding is not a wish for something more, but the calm certainty that he already has the one thing worth having.