Samanal Hanguman Athare Lyrics by Uresha Ravihari

Among butterfly feelings,
unblemished wishes scatter and fall.
On the soft breeze, the gentle fragrance, pollen dust spreads wide.
Hidden from the world, all through my heart,
new feelings are waking…

Lovely flowers in bloom, sweetly scented,
swaying playfully.
My heart’s flowers, carrying dreams,
hide away inside a rainbow…

The koel and the swallow, birds in their dance,
offered up their love.
Both my cheeks, with a kiss,
are being wetted, and I hardly notice…

Among butterfly feelings,
unblemished wishes scatter and fall.
On the soft breeze, the gentle fragrance, pollen dust spreads wide.
Hidden from the world, all through my heart,
new feelings are waking…

A young woman feels something new stirring inside her, the first soft flutter of falling in love, and she sings it the way you would only tell yourself, quietly, before anyone else knows. That is where the song lives, in the tender private moment when love is just beginning and the whole world suddenly looks brighter.

The title itself sets the mood. “Samanal hanguman athare” means “among butterfly feelings,” and in Sinhala the butterfly (samanalaya) stands for everything light, fluttering and new, the giddy, weightless feeling of early love that won’t sit still in your chest. Her wishes are “noyindul,” untouched and unblemished, like a flower no one has picked yet, so this love is pure and brand new, nothing spoiled about it. She reaches for images of the garden to carry the feeling: a soft breeze, a sweet fragrance drifting, fine pollen dust scattering on the air. In Sinhala song, scent and pollen carried on the wind are the standing image for love quietly spreading where you can’t see it, so when she says the fragrance and pollen spread “hidden from the world, all through my heart,” she means this feeling is filling her completely while she keeps it secret from everyone around her.

The middle verses bloom outward. Fragrant flowers sway “playfully,” and her own heart becomes a flower carrying dreams, hiding inside a rainbow. The rainbow (dedunna) is the color and wonder of it, a love so bright and many-colored that she tucks her dreams away inside it like a secret too lovely to say out loud. Then the birds arrive. The koel (kovula) and the swallow dance and offer their love, and she imagines their song kissing her cheeks until they are wet, and she barely notices it happening. The koel’s call in Sri Lankan poetry is the voice of longing and the sweetness of the season, so the birds singing love over her is nature itself joining in her joy, the outside world echoing what is blooming inside her.

What you are left with is the lightness of it all. There is no heartbreak here, no aching, just the pure delight of new feelings waking up, fragrant and bright and a little secret. She holds this love close and lets it color everything, the breeze, the flowers, the birds, the rainbow, until the whole world seems to be falling in love along with her.