Sarojani Lyrics by Raini Gunathilaka

Tomorrow morning come to the police station, Sarojani
I will come with you to make the complaint, Sarojani
let us share one bench at the courthouse, Sarojani
give me your tears too, shall we weep, Sarojani

Sarojani, Sarojani, don’t cry, Sarojani
Sarojani, Sarojani, shall we weep now, Sarojani
Sarojani, Sarojani, let us share the sorrow, Sarojani
Sarojani, Sarojani, our hearts have died, Sarojani

There isn’t powder enough to cover those marks, Sarojani
mine too have faded now, the time has passed, Sarojani
the husband who was mine, you took and flew off high, Sarojani
the sorrow the world never saw, now you know it too..

Sarojani, Sarojani, shall we weep now, Sarojani

A long journey, enduring a hell beneath one roof,
because of you it ended, you do not know, Sarojani
that sorrow, now you are the one feeling it, I know, Sarojani
what the two of us shared was not a husband but a volcano

Sarojani, Sarojani, don’t cry, Sarojani…

This is a bitter, darkly ironic song addressed to a woman named Sarojani, and beneath its calm invitation lies a story of shared pain. The narrator asks Sarojani to come to the police station tomorrow, to file the complaint together, to share one bench at the courthouse, even to share their tears. What sounds almost gentle is really two women discovering they were wounded by the same man.

The wound is domestic and hidden. There is not enough powder to cover those marks, the narrator tells her, and admits her own have only faded with time, a quiet and chilling reference to the bruises of an abusive marriage. The man who was once her husband, she says, Sarojani took and carried off, and the sorrow the world never saw is now Sarojani’s to feel.

The last verse turns the two rivals into fellow survivors. A long journey enduring a hell under one roof ended because of Sarojani, and now she is living that same hell. The line that lands hardest drops all pretence: what we shared was not a husband but a volcano. It is a song about women bound together by the same cruelty rather than by friendship, offered a grim, sisterly solidarity in place of comfort.