Adare Katu Satahan Ape Lyrics by Nalinda Ranasinghe

The thorny little marks of our love,
if they still remain in the heart,
let’s become ours again, again and again.

On those lonely paths,
the footprints we left as we walked,
if you still hold them in your memory,
so that once we meet we never part,
shall we fall in love all over again?

If there’s still room in your heart,
if there’s no one else beside you now,
the wonder that once came into our world of love,
joined together the way it was before,
let’s tie the knot of our love again.

A young man is reaching back to someone he once loved, asking if the two of them can start over. The love is not gone for him, it is just bruised, and the whole song is him gently testing whether she feels the same.

That comes through right away in the opening image. He calls their love “adare katu satahan,” the thorny marks of love. In Sinhala “katu” is the thorn, the prick, the little hurts a relationship leaves behind, and “satahan” are the notes or marks it writes on you. So he isn’t pretending the past was perfect. He’s saying the love had its thorns and scratches, and if even those painful little traces are still alive in her heart, then there is something left worth saving. He wants to be “ours” again, and he repeats it, “ayemath, ayemath, ayemath,” again and again, the way you plead with someone when you want them to know how much you mean it.

The middle verse leans on the footprints they left walking those quiet, lonely paths together. In our love songs a shared road and the prints left on it stand for the life two people built side by side, the small ordinary moments nobody else saw. He’s asking her to remember those, and the heart of his wish is in “hamuwela wen nowena lesa,” to meet again in a way that this time will not end in parting. It’s a careful, almost shy question, will we love each other once more.

By the last verse the asking turns into hope. He sets two soft conditions, if there’s still room in her heart and if there’s no one else beside her now, and then he calls their old love “viskam,” a wonder, something rare and almost magical that once came into their world. He wants to come together “pera wage,” just like before, and to “tie the knot of our love” again. What the listener is left holding is that tender uncertainty, a man standing at the door of an old love, hat in hand, asking to begin again and waiting to see if she’ll say yes.