Wahi Pabalu Seli Lyrics by Surendra Perera

Hooo …….. ………
The way the raindrops, like little pearls, beckon
The way the raindrops, like little pearls, beckon
A heavenly maiden blinks her eyes
Lingering on both sides of the road
Turned toward you,
I sit without blinking my eyes
I sit without blinking my eyes…

A thin film spreads
Rain right over my eyes
I let out warm sighs //
In my dreams I keep you safe
In my dreams I keep you safe
I could kiss a whole string of flowers……

Your fragrant fingers
I stroke your head
Seeing you, I hold my words like a silent sage //
I fall in love
I fall in love
In my dreams I feel the comfort of you……

A young man stands by the road in the rain, completely taken with the girl he loves. The whole song lives in that one quiet moment of watching her, too smitten to look away. He is afraid that if he blinks he might miss a second of her, so he keeps his eyes open even as the rain runs down his face.

The opening image is the loveliest part. He calls the falling raindrops “wehi pabalu,” rain-pearls, the small bright beads of water that hang and drip from leaves and eaves during a Sri Lankan shower. To him they seem to beckon, as if the rain itself is gesturing toward her, and the girl is no ordinary girl but a “dev duwa,” a heavenly maiden, a daughter of the gods. When he says she blinks her eyes, he is describing how she looks back through the rain, and the sight is enough to hold him still on the spot. The rain on his eyes is partly the weather and partly the blur of feeling, the soft film that comes over you when you cannot stop looking at someone.

From there the song moves inward, from watching her to dreaming about her. He sighs, warm and helpless, and says he keeps her safe in his dreams, the place where shy love is free to do what it cannot do out loud. The flowers he longs to kiss stand in for her, and stroking her hair and touching her fragrant hands are the gentle, almost reverent gestures of someone who treasures another person rather than simply wants them. “Oba deka muni watha rakimi,” seeing you I hold my words like a silent sage, captures that beautifully: she leaves him speechless, so full of feeling that he can only keep quiet and look.

What the listener is left with is the tenderness of new love that has not yet found its words. He never declares anything to her face. He just stands in the rain, eyes open, building the whole romance in his heart and his dreams, and that ache of loving someone quietly from a step away is the warmth the song carries.