Mata Thahanam Mal Kakulen

Forbidden to me, though all I wished for was the scent of a flower bud
And that same flower’s scent is all I can feel, without end
Even as the soft breeze carries it past fences and boundaries
Why am I forbidden to kiss the flower I longed for?

You, who bloomed high up on a tall branch,
standing on the balcony among the wealthy men of the house
While the sun pokes through my roof of branches and mocks me
Will the door of that mansion ever open, just so I can see you?

Forbidden to me, though all I wished for was the scent of a flower bud
And that same flower’s scent is all I can feel, without end
Even as the soft breeze carries it past fences and boundaries
Why am I forbidden to kiss the flower I longed for?

The day the sorrow I carry turns into a poem and speaks to you,
will you hear it up there, at your upstairs window?
The flower blooming so prettily at the edge of a walled garden,
will a fierce wind carry it off tomorrow, without me even knowing?

Forbidden to me, though all I wished for was the scent of a flower bud
And that same flower’s scent is all I can feel, without end
Even as the soft breeze carries it past fences and boundaries
Why am I forbidden to kiss the flower I longed for?

A young man has fallen for a girl he has no way of reaching. She lives in a big house with money behind it, and he stands outside the fence. He never says any of that straight out. He talks about a flower instead, one he is not allowed to touch, and the whole song sits inside that single image.

The flower bud is the girl, and the scent that keeps drifting over to him is everything about her he cannot stop noticing. The chorus catches the unfairness of it: the breeze carries her fragrance right across the boundary fence, so the wall between them means nothing to the wind, yet it means everything to him. All he asked for was the scent, and even that is off limits.

The first verse fills in why. She has bloomed high on a tall branch, up on the balcony among the wealthy men of the household, while he is down below under a roof of branches with the sun poking through the gaps at him. That gap in the roof is a quiet Sinhala way of saying poor, and the sunlight coming through it feels like teasing. So he asks whether the door of that grand house will ever open, just so he can look at her. He is not asking for her hand. He is asking to be allowed to see her.

By the second verse his sadness has become a poem, and he is still not sure it will travel as high as her upstairs window. Then comes the line that stings: the flower blooming at the edge of a walled garden could be carried off tomorrow by a hard wind, and nobody would think to tell him. That wind is the match her family will arrange, decided in rooms he will never be invited into.

What stays with you is how gentle he keeps it. No anger at her, none at the rich men on the balcony. Just a boy at a fence, wondering why wanting the scent of a flower should count as a crime.