Sawandari Horahin Andagahuwa Lyrics by Sangeeth Wijesuriya

A fragrant one stole in and called out to me
Honest and true, right there I stood frozen
With the most loving look, she lifted me up
And laid me down on velvet spread across the ground
In a dream we talked a thousand times over
Sweet and full, like an evening filled with music
On my own I murmur, on my own I gather the words
Playing for you, singing for you
The sorrow of saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth) fell away from my path
Playing for you, singing for you
The sorrow of saṃsāra fell away from my path

Your fragrance pierces straight through my mind
Out of a love with no end, I was made anew
Forever it runs a soft hand over my whole being
You became the start of a whole story
In a dream we quietly worked out all we had to say
Sweet and rich, like an evening filled with music
On my own I smile, on my own I weep
Thinking of you, singing for you alone
The sorrow of saṃsāra fell away from my path
Thinking of you, singing for you alone
The sorrow of saṃsāra fell away from my path

A young man is lost in the memory of the woman he loves, and the whole song is him alone, playing his music and singing only of her. She is never given a name. She arrives as a fragrance, something he feels before he sees, slipping in quietly and calling to him, and from that moment he is hers.

The way he describes her is worth slowing down on, because so much of the feeling sits in the imagery. He keeps calling her a scent, “sawanda,” a fragrance that steals in and then pierces his mind. In Sinhala love song a beloved is often a fragrance rather than a face, because a scent gets inside you without being touched and you cannot hold it or push it away, which is exactly how her presence works on him. He says one loving look lifted him up and laid him on velvet, the soft, cushioned feeling of being completely cared for. And again and again he returns to music: their nights together feel “like a musical evening,” that warm, unhurried richness of an evening of song, which tells you these meetings live in dreams and memory, not in the room with him.

That is the quiet ache underneath it all. He is alone. He murmurs to himself, he strings the words together by himself, he smiles by himself and cries by himself. The talks he treasures happened in dreams. So the love is real and enormous, “a love with no end,” but the woman is not here, and the only way he can hold her is to keep playing and singing about her.

The line he keeps coming back to is the one that gives the song its weight. Thinking of her, singing for her, “the sorrow of saṃsāra fell away from my path.” Saṃsāra is the long Buddhist cycle of birth, suffering and rebirth, the whole heavy weight of worldly sorrow. For him, just holding her in his mind and turning her into a song lifts that weight off him for a while. The comfort is not that she came back. It is that loving her, even from this distance, even only in music and dreams, is enough to make the suffering of the whole world ease for the length of a song.