Ma sanasa Lyrics by Mervin Perera

Comforting me, soothing me,
a fairy comes softly and asks to lodge in my heart.
A fairy comes softly and asks to lodge in my heart.

Straining out sweet nectar and bringing it, fooling even the gods,
with a wink of her eye she danced, her dance reaching her lips.
Feelings pressed close, did they, mingling with words,
floating in a dream-world, the cool of sandalwood spreading.

Comforting me, soothing me…

Killing sleep through the night, her loving lips grown weary,
until she comes again my fairy waits, watching the road.
Tomorrow too the moon will rise and night will come,
and she will float into the dream-world, my fairy will seek me out.

Comforting me, soothing me…

A young man falls asleep and a fairy comes to him in the night. She arrives softly, almost shyly, to comfort and soothe him, and she asks for one thing, to be allowed to live in his heart. That is where the song sits, in the warm half-place between sleeping and waking, where a man holds a dream so sweet that he does not want morning to break it.

The fairy here, the suranganawa, is the celestial maiden of Sinhala folklore, the kind that drifts down from another world, more beautiful than anything earthly. When the song says she strains out nectar and even fools the gods, it is painting her as something more than human, lovely enough that heaven itself would be tricked by her charm. She winks, she dances, and the dance seems to gather at her lips, the way a smile finishes a movement. None of this is meant to be literal. It is how the dreamer feels her, a vision so vivid that feelings well up and get tangled with half-heard words, everything blurring together as the dream floats on. The line about sandalwood is the giveaway of how it feels. Sandalwood, sandun, is the standing image in Sinhala for a cool, calming scent, and here that coolness spreads over him like the soft peace of a good dream.

By the second verse the night has worn on, sleep is gone, and even the fairy seems tired, her lips weary from the long night. But the longing has shifted now. She becomes someone he waits for. She sits and watches the road for him, and he in turn knows the cycle will keep returning, tomorrow the moon will rise, night will fall again, and she will come floating back into his dream to find him. The moon rising is the gentle marker of nightfall, the hour when she can return.

What stays with you is the tenderness of it, a love that lives only in sleep yet feels truer than waking life. He is not heartbroken, he is held. The dream comforts him, the fairy keeps her promise to come back, and so the night, which usually means loneliness, becomes the one time he is not alone.