Sayam Kirilli Lyrics by Theekshana Anuradha

Evening bird, where have you gone?
Have you faded into the dusk?
I’ll weave you a flower garland, I’ll sing you love songs
I love you, I love you
I’ll hold you close
I’ll sleep with you in my arms
I love you, I love you

A while passed by, angry, with tears falling
“Where did you go without telling me?” I was left alone in my heart
I’ll weave you a flower garland, I’ll sing you love songs
I love you, I love you
I’ll hold you close
I’ll sleep with you in my arms
I love you, I love you

You were only pretending, telling a little lie
Don’t you know you only acted angry?
Look at me with a smile and comfort me
I can’t bear to be alone any longer

A young man is calling out to the girl he loves, and the whole song is that call. He names her “sayam kirilli,” the evening bird, the little bird of twilight, and asks where she has gone, whether she has slipped away and disappeared into the dusk. Calling her a bird is tender and playful at once. She is something light and free that he is half afraid will fly off and not come back, and the fading evening light becomes the worry that he is losing her.

From there he pours out everything he wants to give her. He promises to string her a garland of flowers and to sing her love songs, to hold her close and fall asleep with her in his arms. In Sinhala love songs the flower garland is the old image of devotion and welcome, the gift you offer someone you treasure, so when he says he will weave her one, he is really saying he wants to spend his life caring for her. “Aadarei aadarei man,” I love you, I love you, keeps coming back like a heartbeat under all of it.

Then the song lets us see why he is pleading. There had been a quarrel. A stretch of time went by heavy with anger and tears, and she left without a word, and he was sitting there alone with the question turning over in his mind, where did you go, why did you not tell me. That loneliness inside his own heart, “heethale thani wela,” is the ache at the center of the song.

By the last verse he has worked it out, and there is relief in it. He realises the anger was never real. She was only pretending, putting on a face, telling a small lie to tease him. So he asks her to drop the act, to just look at him and smile and settle his heart, because he cannot stand being apart from her any longer. It is a gentle, very human song about a small lovers’ fight and the longing to make up, the kind where you would give the other person flowers and songs and anything else if they would only come back and smile at you.