Olu Nelum Neriya Rangala Lyrics by Sisira Senarathne

Water lilies and lotuses sway like the pleats of a saree
Ripples rise with a sound like tinkling anklet bells
Water lilies and lotuses sway like the pleats of a saree
Ripples rise with a sound like tinkling anklet bells
At the river crossing, flowers are spread out
My little boat glides along

Let us go gently, swaying, swaying, swaying
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing

The lapwings settle into their nest
Flocks of birds rise and lift their calls
The lapwings settle into their nest
Flocks of birds rise and lift their calls
Look how they bow down, a white parasol
Won over by your beauty

Let us go gently, swaying, swaying, swaying
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing

The monitor lizard and its playful mate
Searching, the water eddies swirl and rise
The monitor lizard and its playful mate
Searching, the water eddies swirl and rise
Like the white of egrets, all along the riverbank
You too look like a line of egrets

Let us go gently, swaying, swaying, swaying
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing
Stroke by stroke, rise up at the silver crossing

This is one of Sisira Senarathne’s gentle river songs, a picture of a boat gliding down a Sri Lankan waterway while everything along the banks comes alive. There is no heartbreak or longing here. It is a song that simply invites you to come along for the ride and look at the beauty of the water, the flowers and the birds. The repeated line “yamu nalawille” means “let us go, swaying” and it sets the rhythm of the whole piece, the slow rock of a small boat being rowed stroke by stroke.

The opening leans on a very Sri Lankan way of seeing nature. The water lilies and lotuses on the surface “sway like the pleats of a saree,” comparing the flowers ruffling in the water to the soft folds of a woman’s saree as she walks. The ripples the boat leaves behind do not just make a sound, they “tinkle like anklet bells,” the kikini, the little bells women wear at the ankle. So the river itself is described as if it were a graceful woman moving and dancing, and the boatman is rowing through her. The “silver crossing,” the ridi thotille, is the river landing where the water catches the light and turns silver, the place the boat is heading toward.

As the song moves on it fills the scene with the birds of the wetland. The kirala, the red-wattled lapwing, tucks into its nest, and whole flocks lift off the water calling out. The egrets, the kokku, stand white along the bank, and in the loveliest turn of the song the singer tells the woman with him that she too looks “like a line of egrets,” kokun relaka, a row of pure white birds against the green riverbank. That image of unbroken white is the Sinhala measure of grace and purity, and it is his way of saying her beauty belongs to this gentle landscape as much as the flowers and the birds do. Even the monitor lizard sunning by the water and its mate get a place in the picture, nothing in the riverside is left out.

What you are left holding is calm, not ache. The whole song is an unhurried float down a Sri Lankan river at its most beautiful, the kind of slow journey where you notice every flower, every bird and every ripple. By tying the woman’s beauty into the water lilies, the anklet ripples and the white egrets, the singer makes her a part of the country’s own quiet loveliness, and invites the listener to drift along and feel that peace too.