Eka Yaye Kaka Bibi Lyrics by Sunil Edirisinghe

Pecking and eating fruit on the one branch, we lived together as one
Looking after each other as if we were born into a single family
Now they slip a nose rope on us, they tie us to a cart
We who once had tender little buds, our own precious blessing of rain

When the little bride came to the house, you turned out to be a sly monitor lizard
Even to go to the well she must first ask permission
With her teeth pulled and laid in your hand, you make the poor girl dance
The cruel rules of the household bind her like a chained punishment

To the one ox that has fallen into the pit, only the woman of that same pit goes
Wanting to give a hand to lift him up out of it
There is no well-wisher of her own, it would be good if someone thought of her
If this is marriage, then marriage is a truly bitter medicine

This is a quiet, angry song about what happens to a young woman once she is married off and sent to live in someone else’s house. It opens with a gentle picture of childhood, brothers and sisters pecking fruit off the same branch like a flock of birds, growing up together and protecting one another as one family. That warmth is the setup, because the rest of the song shows how harshly that closeness is broken once a girl is given away.

The images of being yoked are the heart of it. A nose rope and a cart are what you put on cattle to control them, so when the singer says they slip a nose rope on “us” and tie us to a cart, he is saying a married woman is handled like a work animal, not a person. The “tender little buds” and the “precious rain” are the children she once was among, the soft, cared-for life of a daughter at home, now traded for this.

Then the song turns to the new household and names the cruelty plainly. The little bride arrives, and the people of the house turn out to be like a kabaragoya, the monitor lizard, a creature country people see as cunning and cold. She cannot even walk to the well without asking permission. The line about teeth pulled and held in someone’s hand is a harsh, vivid way of saying she has been left defenceless, stripped of any power to bite back, and then made to dance to their tune. The rules of the house bind her as tightly as a chained punishment.

The last verse lands the bitterness. When one ox falls into a pit, only the woman from that same pit will go to lift him out, she stands by her husband even when no one stands by her, and she has no well-wisher of her own to think of her. If this is what marriage means, the singer says, then marriage is a bitter medicine, the kind you swallow because you must, not because it heals you. The whole song is a protest, dressed in farmyard images, against the way a daughter’s freedom is signed away the day she is wed.