Sandakada Pahanaka Lyrics by Sunil Edirisinghe

Film: Mathara Aachi (1973)

Polishing the carvings on a moonstone,
floating rainbows settle down to rest.
A bubble risen from a stirred-up sweetness,
a line of letters is written on two hearts.
In a flame that never dies from age to age,
as the foundation of a life rises up,
she is being carried off into an unseen distance
(as a delicate bud withers away)..//

Whispering a secret onto a thousand petals,
a dewdrop passed from tip to tip,
gathered and held a whole league up high,
two trembling lips drew it there.
The sky too thundered and scattered darkness,
raindrops that mingled in with it,
as she is carried away among the ruins
(another man set his heart on her)..//

The carvings on a moonstone..

A bud born out of season in the lake of the heart,
torn from its stem and sent far away,
a teardrop that slipped down and wet the earth
has merged into the seven seas.
The hurt, grieving, burning heart that became your lot,
opening the windows of a single-pillared mansion,
until it flies back from that jewelled palace
(the throbbing heart sits and waits)..//
Sits and waits..

This is one of the great elegiac songs of old Sinhala cinema, from the 1973 film Mathara Aachi, and it is not a simple love song but a poem about loss, about a beloved taken away and a heart left waiting. The words are built almost entirely out of images, so to follow it you have to read what the pictures stand for.

It opens on a sandakada pahana, the carved semicircular moonstone slab at the foot of an old temple stairway. Its rings of carved animals and lotuses are one of the most sacred, lasting things in our culture, and the song says rainbows come to rest on its polished stone. That is the lyricist’s way of saying something rare and beautiful is being shaped, the way two people’s lives are being joined: a bubble rising out of stirred sweetness, a line of writing inscribed across two hearts, a flame that burns on undying from one age to the next. Just as that foundation of a shared life is being laid, she is carried off into a distance no one can see, and the bracketed line tells you plainly what that means: a tender bud is withering. Someone young and lovely is dying.

The second verse keeps circling the same grief through nature. A single dewdrop carries a whispered secret across a thousand petals, lifted high and held by trembling lips, and then the sky itself thunders and pours down darkness, rain merging with that fragile drop. The storm is the world’s own weeping. She is being carried away now among ruins, the broken remains of what was being built, and in the middle of all that loss the lyric notes something quietly human and cruel: even as she is being taken, another man was setting his heart on her. Love and longing do not stop for death.

By the last verse the meaning is laid bare. A bud born in the lake of the heart, plucked from its stem out of season before its time, is the beloved taken too young. A teardrop falls, wets the soil, and runs all the way out to merge with the seven seas, one person’s small grief dissolving into something vast. What is left is a heart that is hurt, grieved and burned, the lot of the one who stays behind. He throws open the windows of a lone-pillared mansion, an image of a single soul keeping watch in an empty house, and waits for her to fly back from the ruwan vimana, the jewelled celestial palace where the dead are imagined to dwell. He knows she will not return, yet the throbbing heart sits and watches anyway. That is the ache the song leaves you with, the patience of grief that keeps the windows open long after there is anyone left to come home.