Nil Dasin Balawi Lyrics by Sureni De Mel

You came in secret and whispered to me
Those words you said left my mind in a daze
You came close to me once again
Go on, tell me what’s on your mind

You looked at me with those deep blue eyes and smiled
What is it you keep murmuring?
Your love that wraps itself around my heart
You becoming mine is my only wish

No, not yet, no, you haven’t come yet
Even in dreams I can’t bear to be far from you
I only just caught a glimpse of your face
Where did you go, leaving me behind?

You looked at me with those deep blue eyes and smiled
What is it you keep murmuring?
Your love that wraps itself around my heart
You becoming mine is my only wish

I’ll come flying from flower to flower
I’ll open the window of my heart and look out
I’ll wish for the very thing my mind dreams of
That is the love I longed for

You looked at me with those deep blue eyes and smiled
What is it you keep murmuring?
Your love that wraps itself around my heart
You becoming mine is my only wish

A young woman is caught up in someone who keeps slipping in and out of her life, and her whole heart is set on him. The song opens with him arriving quietly and whispering something to her, words that leave her head spinning long after he has gone. She isn’t sure if any of it is real, and that uncertainty runs through the whole song, the sweet, restless feeling of new love that you can’t quite hold on to.

The heart of the song is the chorus, where she remembers him looking at her with deep blue eyes and a small smile, his lips moving as if murmuring something she can’t fully make out. In Sinhala love songs the eyes carry the whole conversation, so when she sings “nil deasin balawi” (you looked at me with blue eyes), she means a look that said far more than words ever could. That single glance is enough to make his love feel like it has wrapped itself right around her heart. And under it all sits one plain wish, repeated like a prayer: that he would simply become hers.

Then comes the ache. He hasn’t really come, not properly, not to stay. She catches only the faintest sight of his face before he is gone again, and she can’t bear the distance even in her dreams. So she turns it into longing she can carry. She pictures herself drifting “from flower to flower” like a bee or a butterfly, opening the window of her heart to watch for him, holding on to the one thing she keeps wishing for. The image is gentle and a little helpless, someone who knows the love may only ever live in her imagination but who refuses to stop hoping.

What the listener is left with is that tender, unfinished feeling of falling for someone before you know if they will stay. The eyes, the half-heard whisper, the open window, all of it adds up to a girl quietly guarding one wish in her heart, that the person she can’t stop thinking about would finally be hers.