Obath Ehemanam Lyrics by Shirly Waijayantha

If you are like that, then I too am alone now
making my own heart lonely, still loving you
if I am like this, taking my heart in hand
who even are you?

Ha..ha…ha…haha..

If there is no room for spring now
having taken my heart and fooled it
still, if I do love you
why should I grieve over it?

If you are like that

The love that seeks only you and burns my heart
this love, why is it such pain?
If again and again I keep on loving
why think about it any further?

If you are like that

This is a love song that shrugs even as it aches. The clever hook lives in its wordplay: obath ehemanam, mamath mehemanam, “if you’re like that, then I’m like this.” She has grown distant, “like that,” and so he finds himself alone, deliberately making his own heart lonely to match her, all while still loving her. The half-teasing question “who even are you?” captures how unknowable she has become to him.

The middle verse is where he starts talking himself down from the pain. Maybe there is “no room for spring” now, spring being the season of love and hope; maybe his heart has been taken and fooled. But then he lands on a stubbornly simple logic: if I truly love you, why should I sit here grieving about it? Love, he decides, is not a thing to mourn.

The last verse pushes that reasoning to its gentle conclusion. Yes, this love seeks only her and burns him, and yes it feels like pain, but if he is going to go on loving her “again and again” anyway, what is the use of overthinking it? What the listener is left with is not heartbreak exactly but a kind of rueful acceptance, a man who cannot stop loving someone who has drifted away, and who has quietly chosen to make peace with that rather than torment himself over it.