Made Lagina Tharawan

Am I to wash the ducks that live in the mud
From a boar’s tusk, what elephant pearl am I to take
On a fine bed, am I to be fooled by a fickle man
If I did that, you would call me a foolish woman
A foolish woman…

The ducks that live in the mud…

Elephants wild with rut, with a thread of lotus stem
am I to tie them down
Seeing the deer run past, am I to hold out
the greens I have plucked
If I did that, you would call me a foolish woman
A foolish woman…

The ducks that live in the mud…

The winds that blow, with a spider’s web
am I to hold them back
From a neem tree, how am I
to pluck sandalwood flowers
If I did that, you would call me a foolish woman
A foolish woman…

A woman stands her ground here and answers a man, or the world, with a string of questions that all have the same answer: no. She is being told to trust someone who has already shown her what he is, and instead of arguing about him directly, she lists things nobody in their right mind would attempt. Every question is a small joke with a hard edge in it, and by the end of each verse she says the punchline herself: if I did any of that, you would call me a fool.

The images come from a world of old Sinhala poetry, and each one is a picture of wasted effort. Washing the ducks that live in the mud is pointless because they go straight back into it. The gaja muthu, the pearl believed to form inside an elephant’s tusk, is the rarest treasure there is, so hunting for one in a boar’s tusk is looking for gold in the wrong animal altogether. Then comes the line the whole song turns on, sitting quietly among the others: on a beautiful bed, am I to let a fickle man deceive me. She has slipped the real subject in between two absurdities so you understand it is just as absurd.

The second and third verses press harder. Tying down elephants in rut with a thread of lotus stem is a classic image of trying to hold something powerful with something delicate, and it appears in Sanskrit and Sinhala verse exactly to show how hopeless it is. Offering plucked greens to deer already running away is kindness arriving too late for anyone who wants it. Stopping the wind with a spider’s web, and expecting fragrant sandalwood blossom on a kohomba (neem) tree, the bitterest tree in the village garden, say the same thing in the plainest way she can: a bitter tree gives bitter flowers, and a man’s nature does not change because you wish it would.

What lifts the song is her tone. There is no weeping in it, no pleading. She is sharp, a little amused, and completely awake, and she turns the insult around before anyone can throw it at her. Calling herself moda gani, the foolish woman, is her way of saying she knows exactly what a woman gets called when she believes a charming man one more time, and she has decided not to earn the name. Written by Lucien Bulathsinhala for the stage, it carries that theatrical bite, where a single character stops the scene to tell the audience what she has worked out. You are left with the picture of a woman walking away with her dignity intact, and with the sense that she has thought about this for a long time.