Neela Bingu Kela Lyrics by Victor Rathnayake

Blue dragonflies, rows of lotus blooms,
soothed with tender love.
By the soft touch of the swan’s beak on the red lotus,
I am enchanted, lost in a spell. //

The breeze drifts, casting its charm,
the buds rise where the bees gather.
Along the path they lie scattered,
the bees, the picked young buds.
The bees, the picked young buds.

In life’s ocean of milk you are the churned nectar, my goddess.
In this honeyed life, hidden away, you are my lovely-eyed beauty. //
Hidden away, my lovely-eyed beauty.

This is one of Victor Rathnayake’s classical love songs, and it belongs to that older, literary strain of Sinhala music where a man praises the woman he loves entirely through images drawn from nature and old poetry. There is almost no plain talk in it. He never simply says “I love you.” Instead he reaches for blue dragonflies skimming over a pond, rows of lotus flowers opening, swans, bees, and the soft scented air, and lets all of it stand in for her beauty and for the spell she has cast over him.

The opening lines set the scene by a lotus pond. The “neela bingu,” the small blue dragonflies, and the “thamarasa pela,” the rows of lotus, are the gentle, living beauty he is surrounded by, the kind of soft, cooling beauty Sinhala poetry loves. Then comes the central picture: a swan’s beak just touching a red lotus. In classical Sinhala verse the swan (“thisara”) is grace itself, and the lotus is the beloved. That barest touch, beak to petal, is how he describes falling under her charm. He says he is “mohanaya,” enchanted, undone by something as delicate as that.

The middle verse fills the air with movement. A breeze drifts past and seems to work a kind of magic, buds open, and the bees (“surabun”) come to gather at the young flowers scattered along the path. The bee drawn to the bud is one of the oldest images for a lover drawn to his beloved, for desire and sweetness, and here the whole landscape seems to be in love the way he is.

The last verse lifts everything to its highest pitch. He calls on the “kiri sagare,” the ocean of milk, and the nectar churned from it, an image straight out of old Hindu and Buddhist myth where the gods churned that sea to draw out amrita, the nectar of immortality. Out of all of life, he says, she is that one rare, precious thing worth everything, his “kiduri,” his goddess. And in this sweet, honeyed life he wants to keep her hidden and close, his lovely-eyed beauty kept safe for him alone. What you are left holding is not a story or a heartbreak but pure devotion, a man so taken with a woman that he can only speak of her in the language of lotuses, swans and nectar, the most beautiful words he has.