Oba Gana Sitha Radhi Lyrics by Shirly Waijayantha

The loving dream about you that fills my heart
I do not know if it will ever come true
just to tell you, secretly, hidden from everyone,
why am I denied even a moment?

The loving dream about you

Among a swarm of butterflies
becoming a butterfly yourself
I saw you take to flight

You gave off a flower’s fragrance and went your way
do you remember our meeting that day?
as if half-noticing, half-not, that day
you smiled and went your way

The loving dream about you

One day, do you remember, looking aside,
half-aware, you lingered
hiding your loving heart, you
smiled and went your way

The loving dream about you

This is a love kept almost entirely inside. The singer carries “a loving dream about you that fills the heart,” but confesses right away that he does not know whether it will ever come true, and his quiet complaint is heartbreaking in its smallness: why is he “denied even a moment” just to tell her, secretly, how he feels? The whole song is the ache of unspoken love that never finds its opening.

The one memory he keeps is glancing and delicate. He recalls seeing her “become a butterfly among a swarm of butterflies” and take flight, an image of someone light, lovely and impossible to hold. She “gave off a flower’s fragrance and went her way,” present for a moment and then gone, leaving only sweetness behind.

What makes the song so tender is the ambiguity he clings to. Twice he remembers her at their meeting, “half-noticing, half-not,” looking aside as though she were “hiding her loving heart,” and then smiling and leaving. He cannot tell whether she felt something too or whether he imagined it, and that uncertainty is exactly what keeps the dream alive. What the listener is left with is the soft sorrow of a love confessed only to oneself, built on a single fleeting smile that may or may not have meant anything at all.