Seetha Ra Yame (Duleeka) Lyrics by Sanath Nandasiri

Film: Duleeka (1974)

In the dark of the cold night, fortunate blue eyes appeared
Among warm sighs of love, they settled secretly in my heart
Duleeka..////

Day and night I lay waiting on the bed of my thoughts
Never before had I seen such a face, even in unfamiliar dreams

In the dark of the cold night… /

In the moment I dive into the pool of your smiles
I will come searching for you, flying through the starlight

In the dark of the cold night… /

A young man has fallen for a girl named Duleeka, and the whole song is him turning that feeling over in the quiet of a cold night. It opens at the hour when everything else has gone still, and into that dark her eyes appear to him. He calls them “fortunate” blue eyes, the kind of luck you feel when something you never expected to find finds you. Among his own warm, lovesick sighs, the memory of those eyes quietly takes up residence in his heart, and he says her name like he can’t help himself.

The middle of the song is the restlessness of new love. He pictures himself lying awake on what he calls the “bed of his thoughts,” that place we all go to when sleep won’t come and one person keeps circling back in the mind. A face like hers, he says, he has never seen before, not in real life and not even in the strange, unfamiliar dreams sleep brings. That line is his way of saying she is unlike anyone he could have imagined for himself.

The closing image is the tender one. He talks about diving into the “pool of her smiles,” in Sinhala song water often stands for something cool and reviving, so her smile becomes a place he can sink into and feel refreshed. And he promises that in the moment he does, he will come looking for her, flying through the light of the stars. It is the gentle, hopeful overreach of someone in love, ready to cross the night sky itself just to reach the one whose eyes have kept him awake.