Kandy Lamissi Lyrics by Mariazelle Goonetilleke

You are my one and only one and you’re my ever loving one
I’m your one and only Kandy lass
So then, what’s my problem, am I a fair little doll?
I’m your one and only Kandy lass
Sweet Mari, come to me
You are my one and only Kandy lass
So then, don’t tell me to get lost, I’ve got ten acres of paddy
I’m your one and only Kandy lass…..

You are my one and only one and my tender bunch of bananas
I’m your one and only Kandy lass
You’re my skin and bones and I’m your pretty girl
Oh I’m your one and only Kandy lass
Sweet Mari, come to me
You are my one and only Kandy lass
Oh dear, oh dear, don’t tell me to get lost, I’ve got ten acres of paddy
I’m your one and only Kandy lass…..

You’re my Astaire McLean and you’re my James Hadley
I’m your one and only Kandy lass
I’m your Helen Kumari and you’re my Elvis Presley
Oh I’m your one and only Kandy lass
Sweet Mari, come to me
You are my one and only Kandy lass
So then, don’t tell me to get lost, I’ve got ten acres of paddy
I’m your one and only Kandy lass……

You are my one and only one and you’re my ever loving one
I’m your one and only Kandy lass
You’re my drumstick tree on the fence and I’m your kathurumurunga (sesbania greens)
Oh I’m your one and only Kandy lass
Sweet Mari, come to me
You are my one and only Kandy lass
Oh dear, oh dear, don’t tell me to get lost, I’ve got ten acres of paddy
I’m your one and only Kandy lass……

Sweet Mari, come to me
You are my one and only Kandy lass
So then, don’t tell me to get lost, I’ve got ten acres of paddy
(I’m your one and only Kandy lass……//)
Oh I’m your ever loving Kandy lass
(I’m your one and only Kandy lass……//)

This is a playful baila-style love song, a teasing back-and-forth between a couple where a young man is wooing a girl from Kandy and she gives it right back to him. The whole thing is built to make you smile, not to ache. It mixes English and Sinhala in the same breath, which was a hallmark of the old Ceylon dance-floor songs, and the fun is in how casually the two languages bump into each other. The recurring tag, “Kandy lass,” is just his pet name for her, a girl from up in the hill country, and “Sweet Mari, come to me” is him calling her over, half a serenade and half a dare.

The charm is in the everyday village images they throw at each other, the kind of comparisons a real Sri Lankan couple would tease with. He calls her a fair little doll and “my tender bunch of bananas,” meaning she’s young, soft and sweet, the way a fresh banana bunch is. She fires back that he’s nothing but “skin and bones,” so he’s thin and scrawny, while she’s the pretty one. Then come the garden plants: the drumstick tree that grows along the fence (wete murunga) and the leafy kathurumurunga (sesbania greens). These are the most ordinary things in a village home garden, things you cook with every day, so calling each other by their names is affectionate and a little cheeky at once, like saying “you’re my everyday, you’re part of my kitchen and my life.”

His big selling point keeps coming back too. When she tells him to get lost (palayan), he answers that he owns ten acres of paddy, his land, his standing rice crop, his proof that he can provide. That’s the old courtship argument in the Sinhala countryside, a young man showing he has fields and can keep a wife. In between, the couple drop famous foreign names, Elvis Presley, an Astaire, a Hadley, alongside the Sinhala actress Helen Kumari, mixing Hollywood glamour with home, which is exactly the cosmopolitan, tongue-in-cheek flavour of the song.

What you’re left with is warmth and laughter rather than longing. Underneath the jokes about bananas and drumstick trees and ten acres of paddy, it’s two people clearly fond of each other, trading insults the way only people who like each other do. The “oh dear, oh dear” (aiyyo aiyyo) and the endless repeating of “one and only” are him refusing to be turned away. It’s love dressed up as banter, light on its feet, and meant for dancing.