Kullen Pola Pola

Shaking it again and again in the winnowing fan,
picking out the little stones,
wash the rice grains, quick, split the firewood.

Once we have it ready, cook a pot of rice,
make a coconut-milk gravy and add some pickle,
let’s eat together, the two of us, my beautiful one.

Shaking it again and again in the winnowing fan…

Add a touch of tamarind for sourness,
make a breadfruit curry,
the two of us together like a pair of parrots.
On the plate set before you, coconut sambol,
check the salt, the pickle suits the rice just right.

Shaking it again and again in the winnowing fan…

Sit on the step beside the well,
getting wet, rubbing on soap,
I’ll fetch seven pots of water and bathe you, my dear.
Shaking it again and again in the winnowing fan…

This is a happy little village love song, sung by a young man to the woman he loves as the two of them go about an ordinary day together. There is no heartbreak in it, no longing across a distance. The whole song is the simple joy of sharing a home, and the love shows up not in grand words but in the small chores they do side by side.

He walks her through making a meal, and every step is real village cooking. He shakes the rice in the kulla, the flat woven winnowing fan, to toss out the husk, then picks the tiny stones out by hand, washes the grains, and splits firewood for the hearth. Once the rice is on, he plans the rest of the spread: a coconut-milk gravy, a tart breadfruit (del) curry sharpened with tamarind, coconut sambol on the plate, a bit of pickle, and a careful taste to check the salt. None of this is fancy. That is the point. He is describing the food of an ordinary Sri Lankan home, and the tenderness is in how lovingly he lists it, all of it built around one line that keeps coming back: “let’s eat together, the two of us, my beautiful one.”

The image that gives the song its warmth is the pair of parrots. In Sinhala, a couple who are always together, affectionate and inseparable, are spoken of as girawa-girawi, two parrots side by side, and he uses it here to picture the two of them at their meal. It is the kind of comparison a Sri Lankan hears and instantly understands as cosy, settled, domestic love.

It closes by the well, the heart of an old village home, where he offers to draw the water and bathe her, seven pots of it, soap and all. That last touch is the whole feeling of the song in one picture: love that looks after someone in the plainest, most everyday ways. No moon, no poetry about her eyes, just rice cooked together and water carried with care. For anyone who grew up in a Sri Lankan village, it lands as something deeply familiar and sweet, the contentment of a shared life made of small, ordinary kindnesses.