Poddiye Lyrics

Little one, Mother is still Mother.
We are the ones who went wrong, how is any of it her fault?
On a Bak month day when the koel’s eggs are cracking open,
little sister, are you the one picking a fight with Mother?

If she had torn off her breast and flung it away and turned into Pattini,
we would have died of hunger, poor us.
And if the wild fruit we roamed the jungle for had been poison,
then come on, sister, let’s go now and set fire to the Pandyan city!

Just because you happened to hear someone call her a beast,
are all those people who make up stories Bodhisattvas?
Before the demon gets into your brother,
no more tales! Go and bow to your mother.

On the days there was no dan tree, it showed itself as a tree of gold,
the chief monk gave the order and sent down lines of sermon,
a serpent’s tear danced in Muchalinda’s eye,
our mother wrote a sermon of her own in the shrine room.

Blacksmith women too have beaten red-hot iron,
drunk bees have settled even on a cluster of wax flowers,
truly, what do you know about this world?
Even Pattini’s robe had thuththiri burrs caught in it.

Just because you happened to hear someone call her a beast..

An older brother is talking to his younger sister, and she has come home with something ugly she heard said about their mother. He calls her “poddiye” and “nangiye”, the small pet names you use for a little sister, so even while he is scolding her there is love in his mouth. His whole answer to the village gossip sits in the first line: Mother is still Mother. Whatever went wrong went wrong for their sake, and he will not let his sister sit in judgement over the woman who kept them alive.

The second verse hits hardest, and you need the Pattini story to feel it. Pattini (Kannagi) is worshipped in Sri Lanka as the goddess of the faithful wife. When the Pandyan king had her husband executed on a false charge, she tore off her breast, hurled it at the city of Madurai, and burned the place to the ground. So when the brother says that if their mother had torn off her breast and thrown it away like Pattini, the two of them would have starved, he is setting a poor woman’s body against a goddess’s. That breast fed them. The bitter dare that closes the verse, come, let’s go and burn the Pandyan city, is him saying that if she wants a spotless goddess for a mother, they would not have lived long enough to enjoy her.

The images keep circling one idea, that holiness and shame sit closer together than village talk pretends. The koel of Bak month, the April bird everyone listens for at Avurudu, drops its eggs in a crow’s nest and leaves the crow to raise them. Their mother did not do that. The chief monk sends verses of sermon down by order, while their mother wrote her own sermon in the shrine room with her life. Muchalinda, the cobra king who spread his hood over the Buddha through seven days of rain, is given a tear here, because even a snake can shelter a Buddha. Then the last line drops the whole argument in one picture: even Pattini’s own robe had thuththiri burrs stuck to it. Nobody walks through this world clean.

The chorus carries the anger. He asks whether the people inventing these stories are Bodhisattvas themselves, warns his sister that the demon in him is close to coming out, then cuts her off: no more tales, go and bow to your mother. The blacksmith women beating red-hot iron and the drunk bees fooled by a cluster of wax flowers are his way of telling her how little she understands. Women do hard, unlovely work to survive, and men chase things that only look sweet. What stays with you is a son standing between his mother and a village that has decided to call her an animal, and the plain fact under his fury, that she gave her children everything she had.