Sangawa Ganu Mana Lyrics by Victor Rathnayake

(Hide your face away, my lovely one,
for someone else’s eyes may fall upon it,
and my heart grows afraid, trembling and trembling)…//

(In some deep forest home, in a dark cave,
one day I will keep you hidden away)…//
When even a sliver of sunlight sees your face,
my heart fills up with jealousy.

Hide your face away, my lovely one,
for someone else’s eyes may fall upon it,
and my heart grows afraid, trembling and trembling.

(If your face were not as lovely as the gentle moon,
it wouldn’t matter if a thousand eyes looked at you)…//
But the face you showed me only yesterday
should belong to no other pair of eyes.

(Hide your face away, my lovely one,
for someone else’s eyes may fall upon it,
and my heart grows afraid, trembling and trembling)…//

A young man is so deep in love that he has crossed over into something close to fear. He keeps asking the girl he loves to hide her face, not because he is ashamed of her, but because he cannot bear the thought of anyone else’s eyes resting on her for even a moment. The whole song lives in that small, almost helpless plea, “hide your face away,” and in the way his heart shakes whenever he imagines another person looking at her.

The feeling builds as it goes. At first it is a quiet worry, the kind every lover knows. Then it tips into something wilder, he pictures carrying her off to a great forest, hiding her in a dark cave so the world can never see her. He even turns jealous of the sunlight, because if a single beam of light touches her face, his heart fills with envy. It is love stretched to the point where it owns him more than he owns it.

In the last turn he admits to himself why he feels this way. If she were plain, he says, it wouldn’t matter how many eyes looked at her, a thousand could stare and it would mean nothing. But the face she showed him only yesterday is too beautiful for that, and so, by his own reasoning, it must belong to no one else’s gaze. He reaches for the moon to measure her beauty, which in Sinhala song is the standing image of a calm, soft loveliness rather than a dazzling one, the kind of face that quietly pulls every eye toward it. That comparison is what frightens him most.

What makes the song land is how honestly it sits with a feeling people rarely admit out loud. This is not gentle, generous love. It is the possessive, jealous side of falling hard for someone, the part that wants to keep the loved one all to itself. The lyric never apologises for it. It simply lays the trembling heart bare and lets you recognise it.