Nura Wasanthe

Sunk in the dark, left all alone like this,
don’t cry any more, my lovely girl.
Thinking, without meaning to, of that day long ago,
even though the jewelled girdle (manimekhalā) broke back then,
I will take you in as my own, the way Sita was taken,
and adorn you in the palace of my heart…

Don’t try to outdo the waves of the river,
wetting those eyes of yours with tears.
The old stories have drifted away already,
blown off in gusts by a fierce wind.

Even the tilaka you drew on your forehead speaks my own wish aloud,
all because of you, blessed girl, who brought the tender spring of love.
I will take you in as my own, the way Sita was taken, and adorn you in the palace of my heart.

Show me in those eyes that heart-binding,
loving, playful smile.

Be at peace, resting on my chest, gazing up at the new moon,
and from birth to birth, in the lives still to come, come to me as my wife through saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth).

All because of you, blessed girl, who brought the tender spring of love,
I will take you in as my own, the way Sita was taken, and adorn you in the palace of my heart…

A young man sits with the girl he loves while she cries over something that happened before he came along, and the song is him asking her to stop. He never asks what broke, or whose fault it was. He tells her it has already drifted off on a hard wind, and that what is in front of her now is a man who wants her anyway.

The promise he makes is about as big as a Sinhala lyric gets. He says he will take her the way Sita was taken, and decorate her in the palace of his heart. Any Sri Lankan listener fills in the rest of that story without being told: Sita was carried away by another man and then had to prove her purity to the whole world. By reaching for her name, he is saying he does not care how her past looks from the outside. He is taking her as she is and placing her in the highest seat he has.

The images around that promise stay small and tender. The broken manimekhalā, the jewelled belt that came apart, stands in for whatever precious thing fell to pieces back then. He tells her not to compete with the river’s waves, a gentle way of saying she is crying far more than the thing is worth. He points at the tilaka on her forehead and says even that little mark is speaking his wish out loud, as though his hope for her is already written on her face. And he calls her the blessed girl who brought the spring of love into his life, which is where the song gets its name.

The last verse is the softest part and also the most serious. He asks her to rest against his chest and look up at the new moon, the thin one that marks a beginning rather than an end, and then he asks for something far larger than this life: come back to me birth after birth, through saṃsāra, as my wife. In a Buddhist country that vow lands with real weight. Loyalty for one lifetime is a promise anyone can make; a vow across every future birth is the biggest thing he owns, and he hands it to a girl who is still wiping her eyes.