Asiri We Lanka Lyrics by Sunil Santha

South and east and west and north
the four directions united into one single road
sheltered under one flag, let us go forward, Lanka

Blessings, blessings, blessings, blessed be Lanka
Blessed be Lanka, blessed be Lanka

We are all sons, we are all daughters
we are the sons and daughters of Mother Lanka
making your smile blossom like flowers, let us go forward, Lanka

Even when we fall we rise, falling and falling we rise
we rise again and go onward
kindling courage like the great Mount Meru, forward, Lanka

Grown used to the rain, the sun, the dew
skilled at meeting sorrow and joy alike
turning even disaster to good, forward, Lanka

The mighty, mighty deeds our ancestors did
we can, we can, we too can do them
showing our own greatness, forward, Lanka

This motherland that is our heritage
let us make it, make it a heaven on the human earth
offering our lives, building progress forever, forward, Lanka

This is a patriotic marching song, and its whole spirit is in the phrase it keeps returning to: perata ma yamu Lanka, “let us go forward, Lanka.” Arisen Ahubudu’s words and Sunil Santha’s tune are meant to lift a whole people to their feet. It opens by gathering the four directions, south, east, west and north, into “one single road” under “one flag,” an image of a divided island choosing to move as one.

The song then names who is doing the marching: “we are all sons, we are all daughters of Mother Lanka.” The country is the beloved mother, lak mawa, and her children set out to make her smile “blossom like flowers.” The verses that follow are a catalogue of national character the singer wants to call up: a people who fall and rise, “falling and falling” yet rising again, whose courage stands “like the great Mount Meru,” the cosmic mountain of Buddhist and Hindu myth that is the very symbol of the unshakeable.

The last verses turn resilience into ambition. Weathered by rain, sun and dew, able to take sorrow and joy alike, able even to “turn disaster to good,” the people are reminded that the “mighty deeds of the ancestors” are within their reach too. The song ends on its highest note, a vow to make this inherited motherland “a heaven on the human earth,” offering their lives to build it. What the listener is left with is not sorrow or romance but pure uplift, a call to unity, endurance and forward motion sung to the whole nation at once.