Sulanga Wage Danga Karana Lyrics by Roshan Fernando

Playing about like the breeze,
clinging close to me again and again,
cooling my heart the way you do,
where could such a feeling ever be found?

Sometimes you come and touch my heart,
then run far away again.
Softly, softly you tease me.
You are my love poem.

Like the breeze…

At times you come like a swirling wind
and let the sweetness in my heart fade.
Even so, I’m still not angry with you.
Tomorrow too, you are my jewel.

A young man is teasing the girl he loves, half complaining and half adoring her. She never sits still in his eyes. One moment she is close and gentle, the next she has pulled away, and he loves her exactly for that restlessness. The whole song is light on its feet, the way you talk to someone you are completely soft on.

The image he keeps coming back to is the breeze. He says she frolics like the wind, comes near, drifts off, comes near again. In Sinhala song the breeze stands for something playful and free, something you cannot hold or pin down, and that is precisely how she feels to him. When she does come close, she cools his heart. A cooling, soothing feeling here is the language of comfort and relief, the calm you feel when the person you love is finally beside you. He asks where else such a feeling could be found, meaning there is nothing in the world like it.

Then he names the small ache underneath the play. Sometimes she comes like a swirling wind, a stronger gust this time, and lets the sweetness in his heart fade a little. The word for that sweetness, suwada, is really fragrance, the soft perfume of contentment, and her coming and going lets it slip away for a moment. But he will not hold it against her. He says straight out that he is still not angry, and that tomorrow she will still be his jewel, his manika. Calling her his gem is the plain Sinhala way of saying she is the most precious thing he has.

What you are left with is the gentleness of early love, the kind where even being teased and kept guessing feels good. She runs hot and cold, near and far, and he simply calls her his love poem and waits for her to drift back. There is no real quarrel in it, only a young man who has decided that whatever she does, she is his, today and tomorrow both.