Oba Ekka Lyrics by Udaya Sri Wickramasinghe

Every single moment spent with you
has become a beautiful dream
being with me, drawing my whole life close,
you have become a goddess of love
You alone are my moon-maiden forever
through a life where the night had deepened
my world has been filled

Every hour I once spent alone with my heart
loneliness tormented me
I would sit murmuring to the moon
because you were not beside me
You alone are my warm love
all through the cold night
now the whole world has become yours

I waited to be alone with you
to pour out all my feelings
lost somewhere in your beauty
now stay, do not go far away
You alone are my queen forever
all through the mansion of my heart
you have become my very life

This is love at its most settled and grateful. The singer looks at every moment with his beloved and finds it has turned into “a beautiful dream.” She is his devduwa, a goddess or angel, and his sandasavi, his moon-maiden, the moon being the oldest Sinhala image of the beloved. Where his life had felt like deep, endless night, her presence has “filled his world.”

The middle verse tells us where he came from. There were long stretches he spent alone with only his own heart, tormented by loneliness, “murmuring to the moon” because she was not there. That single picture, a man talking to the moon at night, says everything about the emptiness he lived in before her. Now she is his warmth through the cold nights, and the whole world belongs to her.

The last verse turns to a quiet plea. He has waited just to be alone with her and pour out everything he feels, admitting he is happily “lost somewhere in her beauty,” and asks only one thing: stay, do not go far. He crowns her his queen forever, throughout “the mansion of my heart,” and lands on the simplest declaration of all, you have become my very life. What the listener is left with is the warm relief of someone who spent a long time lonely and has finally found the person who makes the world feel full.