Chanchala Hegumaka Lyrics by Maheshika LakmaliSanka Dineth

Feelings turned restless, night after night
shedding tears in the moonlight
The rainbow that rose and dissolved away
that love of yours is dissolving away too
Just the way you came, again
the parting is sure to come
Love is only an illusion
Love is only an illusion

In a restless feeling, sleepless through the three watches of the night
why do you cry out to the tears, O moonlight
when there is sweetness out in the open, in love
did you go chasing the illusion they call a rainbow
Just the way you said, again
the meeting is sure to happen
Love is only an illusion
Love is only an illusion

Was it only a mirage that dazzled the eyes every day
knowing full well, did you offer up everything with both hands //
crossing the limits to taste love
the mirage slips away from you too, in secret //
Just the way you said, again
sorrow, that does come close
Love is only an illusion
Love is only an illusion

Was it only the horizon that joined two hearts every day
isn’t it that very gap that kept those hearts apart
finding comfort in love as if far and near are the same
the horizon will never come close, never able to join //
Just the way you said, again
emptiness, that does come close
Love is only an illusion
Love is only an illusion

This is a song about loving someone and slowly realizing the love itself may have been a beautiful trick of the eye. The voice belongs to someone lying awake through the small hours of the night, watching a love come apart and trying to make sense of why. The line that keeps returning, “love is only an illusion,” is not bitter so much as quietly heartbroken, the sound of a person who has finally understood something they did not want to understand.

The whole song is built on one idea, decoded through three images that any Sri Lankan listener will recognize at once. First the rainbow, the dedunna. A rainbow rises full of color and then dissolves into nothing, and that is exactly what the singer says is happening to this love, it bloomed and now it is fading the same way. Then the mirage, the miringuwa, the shimmer of water you see on a hot road that is never really there. The question “was it only a mirage that fooled my eyes every day” carries a painful realization, that the love which looked so real, the love they gave away with both hands, may have been water that was never there to begin with. The most striking image comes last, the horizon, the kshitija, that line where earth and sky seem to touch. The singer points out the cruel logic of it, the horizon looks like it joins two things, but that joining is precisely what holds them apart, and no matter how far you walk toward it, it never comes any closer. That is the love being described, something that promised to bring two hearts together but was built on a distance that could never be crossed.

There is a steady, sad rhythm to how each verse ends. After every gentle “just the way you came, just the way you said, you will come again,” the singer adds what actually comes back instead. Not the lover, but the parting, then sorrow, then emptiness. The repetition makes the disappointment land harder each time, until the promise of return becomes a promise of loneliness.

What stays with you is the tenderness underneath the disillusion. This is not anger at the other person, it is someone weeping in the moonlight, asking the moon why it makes the tears worse, and admitting that the most beautiful thing they ever chased, rainbow, mirage and horizon all at once, was something that could never be held. The song leaves you with that ache, the quiet acceptance that some loves are real to feel and impossible to keep.