Malata Suwanda Se Yowun Jiwithe Lyrics by Sunil Edirisinghe

(Like fragrance to a flower in our youthful lives,
let us welcome a new love)..//
With smiling hearts and tender eyes,
let us sing its glory, and the world will find peace of mind.

(Touched by a bee’s beak, the buds long to bloom,
the sea embracing the shore quenches the heat of its thirst)..//
You searching for me, and I searching for you,
this restless world is bound together by a quiet love.

Like fragrance to a flower…/

(A tear the eyes never knew slips beneath their lids,
a cool breeze stirs and blows from deep within the heart)..//
In the moon’s tender sway, in the sun’s smile,
love speaks its silent, unattainable meaning.

Like fragrance to a flower…/

This is a tender love song, and the man singing it isn’t talking about one passing crush. He’s talking about love itself, the way it belongs in a young life as naturally as scent belongs in a flower. That single image opens the whole song. A flower without its fragrance is just a shape, and a youth without love is the same, so he invites his beloved to take in a fresh, new love the way you’d breathe in a flower. From there he says that if two people meet this with smiling hearts and kind eyes, and celebrate love openly, the whole world feels a little calmer for it.

The middle verse is built almost entirely on nature, the way the older Sinhala lyricists loved to write. The bee’s touch on a closed bud makes it want to open and bloom, and the sea folding around the shore cools the burning thirst it has carried. These aren’t just pretty pictures. The bee and the bud, the sea and the shore, are the lovers themselves, drawn to each other so that one completes what the other was missing. He puts it plainly in the next line, you looking for me and me looking for you, and says that a restless, unsettled world gets held together and made still by that kind of quiet love.

By the last verse the feeling deepens and turns a little bittersweet. A tear the eyes had never felt before now hides under the lids, and a cool breeze rises from somewhere deep in the heart, the body’s way of carrying a feeling too big to name. He reaches for the moon and the sun, the moon swaying gently like a vine and the sun smiling, the soft and the bright together, to say that love speaks a meaning that stays silent and can’t quite be possessed. That last word matters. The love he sings about is real and steadying, yet there’s something in it that always stays just out of reach, and that ache is exactly what makes it precious.