Mathaka Mandira Thana (Chanchala) Lyrics by Malith Perera

In the temple of memory, those sweet stories were told
Because of the love that began in class, I’m still left alone
The words our lips spoke, the way you held me close with love
You will never change, I am your Chanchala (restless one)

You are my dream, my love-princess
Only my heart knows the garden of love I walk in that dream //

In the palace of my memories, Chanchala my queen
My heart aches to kiss you, drinking in your fragrance //

A young man is holding on to the memory of a first love that began in a classroom. He keeps it alive in what he calls the temple, or palace, of his memory, a quiet inner place where he replays the sweet things they once said to each other. The girl’s name is Chanchala, and the song plays on that name on purpose, because chanchala in Sinhala means restless or wavering. So when he sings “I am your Chanchala,” he is both naming her and admitting that he is the one left unsettled and unable to move on.

The ache here is that the love was real but it slipped away. School love, the kind that starts between classmates, is a tender and common thing in Sinhala song, and it usually carries this same bittersweet weight: it was pure, it was first, and it didn’t last. He is alone now, and the warmth of being held by her, the words their lips once spoke, all of it lives only in memory.

When he calls her his pem kumariya, his love-princess, and his queen, he is crowning her in that imagined palace where she still belongs to him. The fragrance he longs to drink in is a familiar image in Sinhala love poetry, where a beloved’s nearness is described as a sweet scent rather than just a sight or a touch. To breathe in her fragrance is to want her whole presence back, not just a kiss.

What the listener is left holding is the gentle hopelessness of it. He says she will never change, but really it is his own heart that refuses to change, still kissing her in a dream, still keeping her enthroned in a memory she may have long left behind.