Oba Ma Hamuwuna Da Lyrics by Sashika Nisansala

The day you met me, holding it close to me,
it feels like we were bound together in a past life.
You whispered softly in my ear that you love me,
that you love me.

You looked at me without blinking, you looked at me without blinking,
you looked at me without blinking, straight into my eyes.
I looked at you without blinking, I looked at you without blinking,
I looked at you without blinking, straight into your eyes.

With a calm and settled heart, all through the night,
the two of us feel this fluttering, woven through our dreams.
All the long night, your face is right here before me.
Come close and tell me, where did all this love come from,
where did it come from.

You looked at me without blinking, you looked at me without blinking,
you looked at me without blinking, straight into my eyes.
I looked at you without blinking, I looked at you without blinking,
I looked at you without blinking, straight into your eyes.

Two flowers of the heart draw close, blooming in the mind,
soft words linger, hiding their delight.
The moon brims full like water, our eyelashes meet.
Come close and tell me, where did all this love come from,
where did it come from.

You looked at me without blinking, you looked at me without blinking,
you looked at me without blinking, straight into my eyes.
I looked at you without blinking, I looked at you without blinking,
I looked at you without blinking, straight into your eyes.

A young woman is turning over the moment she first met the person she loves, and she can hardly believe a feeling this strong could come out of nowhere. From the very first line she reaches for the idea that the two of them were tied together in a past life, that this love did not begin the day they met but was already waiting for them. That is a deeply Sri Lankan way to explain a bond that feels too big and too sudden to be an accident. When something feels fated, people here say it was carried over from a life before this one, and she leans on that to make sense of how quickly her heart opened.

The heart of the song is one small, unforgettable thing: the two of them looking at each other without blinking, eyes locked, neither one looking away. She keeps coming back to it, you looked at me, I looked at you, because that long held gaze is the whole confession. Nothing dramatic happens, he simply whispers in her ear that he loves her, and she carries that whisper through the night. The repetition is the point. She is replaying it the way anyone replays the first time someone they love really looked at them.

The imagery is gentle and tied to the night. She lies awake with his face floating in front of her all through the long darkness, and the dreams and the fluttering in her chest blur together so she can barely tell sleeping from waking. The two hearts are pictured as two flowers leaning toward each other and opening, a soft image of feelings unfolding side by side. Then comes the loveliest line, the moon brimming full like water just as their eyelashes meet. In Sinhala song the full moon stands for a calm, complete, overflowing kind of beauty and contentment, and placing it right at the moment their lashes touch makes that quiet closeness feel as full and serene as a sky at full moon.

What she is left holding is wonder more than longing. Again and again she asks where all this love could have come from, and she never really answers, because the not knowing is part of the joy. The song stays in that soft, sleepless happiness of new love, two people who looked at each other and could not look away, certain without proof that they were always meant to find each other.