Ratakin Eha Lyrics by Priya Sooriyasena

Flying away to a far-off land,
I won’t be left alone…
Never in my heart
am I turning away from you.
Like today, dear girl, tomorrow too
I won’t be there to meet you…
But I carry your love with me…
your love…

Two lips like young na leaves
folded into your smile…
The days we shared come back to me again and again.
Our love was beyond compare…
It will never break, there’s no doubt of that.

Flying away to a far-off land,
I won’t be left alone…
Never in my heart
am I turning away from you.

Hand in hand,
woven together with a golden thread,
I take you with me…
making every wish of my heart come true…
Tomorrow, on that day, beyond the ocean,
will you welcome me when I come to you so soon?

Flying away to a far-off land,
I won’t be left alone…
Never in my heart
am I turning away from you.

A young man is about to leave the country, flying off to a distant land for work or a new life, and he is singing to the girl he loves before he goes. He knows he won’t be able to see her for a while, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for a long string of days, and that’s the ache running underneath the whole song. But he wants her to be sure of one thing: leaving the country is not the same as leaving her. His body crosses an ocean, his heart never moves an inch.

The tenderness comes through in how he sees her. He describes her two lips as na dalu, the soft pink new buds of the na tree (the ironwood, Sri Lanka’s national tree), a classic Sinhala image for something fresh, delicate and beautiful. He pictures those lips folded into a smile, and that picture is what he carries as the memory of the days they spent together keeps coming back to him again and again. Their love, he says, was asamana, beyond compare, and he tells her plainly there is no doubt it will ever break. That reassurance is really for himself as much as for her, the kind of promise people make when distance is about to test it.

The golden thread he mentions, ran huyen, is the heart of the song. In Sri Lankan thinking a golden thread is the bond that ties two people together, the same idea behind the cord used in a wedding, an unbreakable tie that holds even when the two of them are physically apart. So when he says he takes her with him hand in hand, woven together with that golden thread, he means she travels with him in spirit even though she stays behind. He isn’t really going alone at all.

The song ends on a quiet, hopeful question rather than a confident promise. He imagines a day, tomorrow, somewhere beyond the sea, when he comes back to her in a hurry, and he asks if she will welcome him when he does. After all the reassurance, that small uncertainty is what makes it human. He believes in their love, but like anyone leaving someone they love behind, a part of him still needs to hear that she will be waiting.