Labannata Wasanawak (Athma Ganak) Lyrics by Milinda Sandaruwan

With every blink of an eye
your face takes shape again, and my aching heart is torn once more.
That you were just a trick of fate,
I never once let myself think it, my darling.

You took the happiness you had brought me and carried it away just like that.
Why did my pain mean nothing to you?

(Even if you never come back, bringing some blessing for me to have,
let there be one wish about you, for as many lifetimes as it takes.) //

That love of yours that had no patience,
in those days when you tormented yourself over me,
you who stayed close to me, always the same, never changing,
why did that worth you once had fade away?

You took the happiness you had brought me and carried it away just like that.
Why did my pain mean nothing to you?

(Even if you never come back, bringing some blessing for me to have,
let there be one wish about you, for as many lifetimes as it takes.) //

Though you are gone, to see you as I did before,
I still watch the road, out of an old habit of the heart.
Whenever the memory of us comes back to me,
night turns to dawn with my heart on fire.

You took the happiness you had brought me and carried it away just like that.
Why did my pain mean nothing to you?

(Even if you never come back, bringing some blessing for me to have,
let there be one wish about you, for as many lifetimes as it takes.) //

A young man is left behind after the one he loved has gone, and he cannot stop seeing her. Every time he so much as blinks, her face appears in front of him and the wound in his heart opens up again. He never let himself believe she was just a cruel turn of fate, a person who was never really his to keep. Calling her “raththarane” (my darling, literally “my gold”) even now, after she has hurt him, tells you how gently he still holds her.

The line that cuts deepest is in the chorus. He says she took the very happiness she had brought into his life and walked off with it, leaving him with nothing, and he asks the question anyone left this way asks: did my pain mean nothing to you? Then comes the title image, and it is where the song turns from heartbreak into something almost tender. “Aathma gaanak” means “for many lifetimes,” drawing on the Buddhist idea of saṃsāra, the long chain of births and rebirths. He tells her that even if she never returns and never brings him the good fortune of having her, he will keep one wish alive about her, not just for this life but for as many lives as it takes. In Sinhala this is the highest thing a person can promise someone, that across every future birth, he will still be wishing for her.

In the middle verse he remembers how it used to be. Her love once had no patience, she used to torment herself with worry over him, she stayed close and steady and never changed. So he is left asking the only thing he can: where did all that worth, all that value she once held him in, go? Nothing in him changed. Something in her did, and he never gets to know why.

The last verse is the loneliest. He knows she is not coming, yet he still watches the road for her, the way a heart keeps a habit long after the reason for it is gone. And when the memory of the two of them comes back, his nights do not bring rest. The night burns through to morning with his heart on fire, “hitha gindare,” sleep nowhere near. What stays with you at the end is the strange grace of his promise. He has every reason to be bitter, and instead he offers to carry one quiet wish for her through life after life, asking nothing back.