Yana Thanaka Lyrics by Mihindu Ariyaratne

Wherever you go, may you always be happy..
One day, don’t let yourself be deceived the way I was..
The love I received from you,
I’ll keep hidden in my heart for all time..

To be with you again – in a future birth in saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth),
I count the days..
Seeking my heart, one day,
come back to me, without anger…

You by my side – calling me your very life,
on the days we were together…
That for you there could be a world without me,
my heart never felt it…
If once again you are not mine to hold..
if my love falls short..

To be with you again – in a future birth in saṃsāra…/

Even if you leave my heart – and quietly long
for love from someone else..
If this new love brings you sorrow,
come back to me as before…
The vows I fulfilled were with you..
to nest together for all time..

To be with you again – in a future birth in saṃsāra…/

Wherever you go, may you always be…/
To be with you again – in a future birth in saṃsāra…//

A young man is letting go of the woman he loves, and the first thing out of his mouth is a blessing, not a complaint. Wherever she ends up, he wants her to be happy. The hurt is there, you can hear it when he says he was deceived, but he turns even that into care: don’t let it happen to you the way it happened to me. The love she once gave him, he says he will fold up and keep hidden in his heart for good. This is the voice of someone who has chosen tenderness over bitterness, even while he is breaking.

The ache shows in the contrast he draws. He remembers the days she held him close and called him her very life, her pana, the breath that keeps you alive, the highest word of endearment in Sinhala. Back then the idea that she could have a world without him never even crossed his heart. Now that world has arrived, and he is standing in it alone. So he keeps returning to one quiet hope: if she ever finds herself unloved again, or if his own love somehow wasn’t enough, the door stays open. Come back, he says, and come back without anger.

The heart of the song is the line that repeats like a vow he can’t put down: nawatha oba ha, sasare matuda, to be with you again in a future birth. Sasara is saṃsāra, the long cycle of birth and rebirth in Buddhist thought, and this is how Sri Lankans speak love at its deepest. When this life can’t give you the person you want, you reach past it and ask to meet them in the next birth, and the one after that. He even reaches for the image of perum piruwe, the spiritual merit and vows two people build up together over lifetimes so they can be reborn side by side, and says those vows were made with her, to nest together always, like two birds sharing one home.

What the listener is left holding is a strange, gentle kind of comfort. He has lost her in this life, and he knows it. But by counting the days toward another birth, by leaving the door open for her return, he refuses to let the love simply end. It is grief and faith at once, the very Sri Lankan belief that real love is too big to be finished by a single lifetime.