Ukulata Nawath Lyrics by Rookantha Gunathilaka

Even though I no longer climb into your lap as I did back then,
I am still your son, mother.
Even when I am a thousand miles away,
I am right beside you, mother.//

In this world that fell to me, full of thorns and brambles,
you are my refuge, mother.
Night and day you became a shade over me,
your fragrance, mother.
I am right beside you, mother.

Even though I no longer climb into your lap…

My hands and feet grew hard, I became a grown man,
in your shelter, mother.
I am a tiny ant in the stream of flowing water,
on and on, day after day, mother.
I am right beside you, mother……

Even though I no longer climb into your lap…

This is a grown son speaking to his mother. He is no longer the small boy who used to climb into her lap, and he knows it, but he wants her to hear the one thing that has not changed. Whatever the years have done to him, he is still her child. That is the whole heart of the song, a man who has grown up but never grown out of being his mother’s son.

He opens by admitting the obvious. He does not climb onto her lap the way he did when he was little. He may live a thousand miles away now, a grown man with his own life. And yet, he says, “I am right beside you, mother.” Distance has not moved him an inch. That gentle contradiction, far away in body but right next to her in spirit, runs through the whole song and is what makes it land.

The imagery here is simple and very Sri Lankan. He calls the world that came to him one “full of thorns and brambles,” the rough, scratching path of an ordinary life with all its hardship, and against that he sets his mother as his refuge. Then he reaches for two tender images that a listener feels straight away. She was a “shade” over him, the cool shadow that shelters you from a harsh sun, the way a mother quietly covers her child from everything that could hurt him. And he speaks of “your fragrance,” the warm, familiar smell of a mother that a child carries for life, the comfort of simply being near her.

The last verse is the most moving. His hands and feet have “grown hard,” the toughened body of a man who has worked and weathered the world, and all of it happened in her shelter. Then he shrinks himself down on purpose. Against the great flowing stream of life, of time, of the endless days rolling on, he is just “a tiny ant.” It is a humble, almost devotional way of saying he is small and the journey is vast, but through all of it, day after day, the one place he belongs is beside his mother. What the listener is left holding is that quiet, lifelong gratitude every child feels and rarely says out loud, that no matter how grown or how far, you are still your mother’s child.