Sudu Ath Powwek Lyrics by Nirosha Virajini

A white baby elephant carrying a white lotus in its trunk,
even without circling the royal bed in blessing,
the baby who came to my womb after fulfilling lifetimes of merit,
to me, is a little prince.

Tickling me, walking about inside my womb,
I find myself wondering, just idly, whether you’ll turn out to be a little rascal.
Little one, whether you’re a daughter or a son to me,
what I place upon your head is one and the same love, no difference at all,
love, only love…

I carried you in my womb, but with no wish that you’ll one day become a Buddha,
I turned my blood into milk and fed you, with no desire to boast about it.
Little one, whether you’re a daughter or a son to me,
what I offer you is a true, shining life,
a life, a life…

A white baby elephant carrying a white lotus…

This is a mother singing to the baby growing inside her, and it is one of the most tender kinds of song there is. She is not in love with a man here, she is in love with the child she is about to bring into the world, and she talks to it as if it can already hear her.

She opens with a grand old image. In the Buddhist story of the Buddha’s birth, his mother Queen Mahamaya dreamed of a white elephant carrying a white lotus, and the auspicious circling of the royal bed marked that a great being was on its way. The mother in this song reaches for exactly that picture, then gently sets it aside. Even if no white elephant came with a lotus, even if no sacred omens circled her bed, the little one who came to her after lifetimes of fulfilling perfections (perum, the merit a being gathers over many births) is a prince to her all the same. That is the heart of the song. She does not need her child to arrive as a future Buddha to treat it like royalty.

Then the mood turns playful and physical, the way pregnancy really feels. She can feel the baby kicking and moving inside her, tickling her from within, and she smiles to herself wondering if this one is going to be a little troublemaker. And she says the thing every parent wants their child to know, that whether the baby turns out to be a daughter or a son, her love is exactly the same, with no difference at all. In a culture where a son is sometimes quietly favoured, that line carries real weight.

The last verse is where she lays down what kind of mother she means to be. She carried the child with no grand ambition that it must grow up to be holy or famous. She turned her own blood into milk to feed it (the old Sinhala way of describing a mother’s sacrifice) and she wants no praise for it. All she offers is a true and shining life. After the soaring imagery of elephants and lotuses and Buddhahood, she brings it all down to something plain and human, and that is what makes it land. The reader is left with a mother’s love stripped of every condition, asking nothing of the child except that it live.