Adare Sanathanai Sitha

Thinking that love is eternal…
I, the deluded loving one…
the wishes I once begged of you
in days gone by…
I no longer know them, they have faded from the mind…
Thinking that love is eternal…

The lovers who won by binding love,
in this world, have always been the defeated ones..
even the love that was called eternal, received in this human world, is impermanent..

Thinking that love is eternal… I, the deluded loving one..
the wishes I once begged of you in days gone by, I no longer know, they have faded from the mind..
thinking that love is eternal..

Time has passed and everything has changed.. it has distanced even me from you…
someone like me will come again, searching for you too..
sorrow and joy are like two flowers..

Thinking that love is eternal…

This is a bittersweet, philosophical love song, given its words by the great lyricist Ajantha Ranasinghe. Its refrain is a confession: thinking that love is eternal, I was a deluded lover. The wishes he once begged of his beloved in years gone by have simply faded from his mind, and he can no longer even recall them. From the start the song looks back on love with clear, disenchanted eyes.

The middle states its hard truth plainly. The lovers who thought they had won by binding love tight, it says, are in this world always the ones who lose. Even the love people call sadaakaalika, eternal, when it is received in this human world, turns out to be anithya, impermanent, an echo of the Buddhist teaching that nothing lasts. It is a love song that quietly refuses the usual promise of forever.

The ending finds a weary peace with that. Time has passed, everything has changed, and it has carried even him away from her; someone like him, he supposes, will come searching for her again in turn. He closes on a gentle image, that sorrow and joy are like two flowers growing together on the same plant. Rather than rage against love’s impermanence, the song accepts it, and that acceptance is what gives this old-school piece its grace.