Theertha Yathrawe

Even if an aeon should pass,
on the pilgrimage,
leaving behind very great memories,
she freed herself from me and went away,
on the pilgrimage

The memory I never grasped smoothly
scrapes open a healing scar again,
to erase her from my memory,
I search everywhere for a single boon

How can I convince my thoughts
that the pictures forming there are false?
every message I get from all around
carried me away, back into the past

A wistful song of lost love framed as a pilgrimage (theertha yaathrawa), the journey of life, or of samsara, along which people meet and part. Even if an aeon passes, the singer says, on this pilgrimage she freed herself from me and went away, leaving behind only very great memories. Love here is one stop on a long, sacred road, and she has already moved on.

The middle is the wound that will not close. The memory I never grasped smoothly, a love never fully held, keeps scraping open a healing scar again, reopening the hurt just as it starts to mend. And so he searches everywhere for a single boon, one blessing, one permission, that would let him finally erase her from his memory.

The close is the helplessness of it. How, he asks, can he convince his own thoughts that the pictures forming there are false? He cannot; and worse, every message I get from all around only carries me back into the past. Everything conspires to return him to her. Sung by Madhusha Chandrasiri to words by Lakshantha Chinthaka, composed by Tharindu Damsara, it is a tender, aching song about a love lost on life’s long pilgrimage, and a mind that cannot stop being dragged back to it.