Sobawa De Lyrics by Rodni Warnakula

Look at the splendour of this city, friend, all its dazzling beauty,
see how lovely the road has become.
These soft white curls of cloud are a carpet
laid out all along the way, the sky a glittering mansion above.

In the pretty market stalls on both sides of the road
they sell pleasures not even heaven holds.
The townsfolk bring their gold for whatever they fancy
and trade it for copper, while the heart inside aches without end.

Look at the splendour…

(The proud, perfumed women who kiss painted faces,
tearing their fine sheer veils to offer themselves like flowers.)
They open a closed door with words spoken only through the eyes.
Out in the open the games go on, and nobody breathes a complaint.

Look at the splendour…

(All through the carnival the taverns wake under the moonlight,
those who listen drown their sorrow as the songs fill their ears.)
One hand pours the liquor, as if doing the world a kindness,
a girl spreading her favours, hollowing out hungry, devouring eyes.

(Look at the splendour of this city, friend, all its dazzling beauty,
see how lovely the road has become.
These soft white curls of cloud are a carpet
laid out all along the way, the sky a glittering mansion above.)
Look at the splendour…

This is a sharp, knowing song about a city at night, the kind of place that looks like paradise from the outside and rots a little underneath. The voice is a guide walking you through it, turning to you as a friend and saying “look, just look at all this,” half marvelling and half disgusted. It is not a love song or a personal lament. It is social commentary dressed up in beautiful, ornate Sinhala, a poet showing you the glitter and then pulling back the curtain on what the glitter is paying for.

It opens with pure dazzle. The road is gorgeous, the white clouds are a carpet rolled out along the way, and the sky overhead is a shining palace. That image of clouds as a “palasa” (a spread carpet) and the heavens as a glittering mansion sets up the whole trick of the song, everything is staged to look heavenly. Then comes the first crack. In the bright stalls lining both sides of the street they are selling “pleasures not even heaven holds,” and people hand over their gold and get copper back. That swap, gold for copper, is the heart of it: the townsfolk pay with something precious and walk away with something cheap and worthless, and the heart, the song says, never stops aching from the bargain.

The verses that come in brackets are the ugliest truths, and they are sung almost as ornaments, which is part of the bite. There are the proud, perfumed women kissing painted faces, tearing their own delicate veils to offer themselves like flowers laid at a shrine. A whole conversation, an invitation, a transaction, happens with nothing but a glance, and a shut door swings open. The carnival (“saṇakeḷi”) never ends, the taverns light up under the moon, and the drinkers come to wash their grief down with music. By the last verse the picture is complete: one hand pouring drink as though it were an act of charity, and a girl giving herself away while greedy, “demon” eyes (“rakusu neth”) devour her. The word for those eyes, rakusu, is the word for a flesh-eating demon, and it tells you exactly how the singer sees the men feeding on her.

What you are left holding is the gap between the surface and the cost. The refrain keeps calling the city beautiful, “sobawa,” splendour, again and again, but every time it returns it means it more bitterly. The song never preaches at you. It just keeps repeating “look how lovely this is, friend” while showing you gold traded for copper, sorrow drowned in arrack, and a young woman hollowed out under hungry eyes, and lets you sit with the distance between the two.