Nandaniya Pema

Delightful love has put on a disguise, a sea of raging waves
Sleep drifts away, and you come and stand across my eyes…

A small stem grew into a mountain, and the world opened its eyes to it
I am dazed and lost, the flowers of my heart beaten and crushed…
The threads of love we tied come loose, one by one, and slip away
Why have you been taken in by these lying words?…

Delightful love…

In the thicket along the forest path, the koel’s song has gone silent
The face that once opened in a gentle smile has withered
Does it bring you comfort now, that old joy come close to your heart again?
Everything I wished for, and called beautiful, is broken…

Delightful love…

A man is watching a love he trusted come apart, and the first line already tells you how it happened. The love that felt so sweet was wearing a disguise, and underneath it was a sea of rough waves. He only learns this after he has gone in too far to swim back. Now he lies awake at night, sleep slipping away from him, because every time he closes his eyes she is standing right there at the edge of them.

What breaks him is not only losing her but how she was lost. Someone spoke to her in “musa bas”, false words, sweet words that were never true, and she believed them. A small thing swelled into a mountain and the whole world turned to look, which is the particular shame of a village or a small town where a private hurt becomes everybody’s news. The image of “sithmal”, the flowers of the heart, being beaten flat is a favourite in Sinhala song for hope crushed by other people’s talk. The love they built is drawn as rope or thread they tied together, and the ties are not cut, they come loose, one strand at a time. That slow unravelling hurts more than a clean break.

The last verse is quieter and sadder. The koel, the bird whose call in Sinhala poetry belongs to spring, to Avurudu, to the season when things bloom and lovers meet, has stopped singing in the thicket. When the koel goes silent, the whole season has gone out of the world. Her face, which used to open into a soft smile, has faded like a flower left too long in the sun. He asks her, without bitterness, whether the old happiness feels like comfort now that it is only a memory.

There is a craft detail worth catching. Almost every line opens on the same “nda” sound, Nandaniya, Ninda, Kenda, Anda, Banda, Manda, Landa, Danda, Sundarai. That repeating beat gives the song a rocking, tidal pull, which suits a lyric that begins with waves. What the listener is left holding is the closing line: he called all of it beautiful, and now every beautiful thing he hoped for is broken.