Tharu Awidin (Kumi Teledrama Theme Song) Lyrics by Yashodha Priyadarshani

Stars come walking across the sky,
the moon draws patterns over the meadow.
In this cold, falling dew,
my heart feels so alone, my mother.
(I’m lonely, my father…//)

(Stars come walking across the sky,
the moon draws patterns over the meadow.
In this cold, falling dew,
my heart feels so alone, my mother…//)

Lallala laa.. laala laala lala
Lallala laa.. laala laala lala

Bathing the stars in moonlit water,
holding the cool inside the clouds,

bringing dreams from far away,
come and kiss my head, my mother.

I’m lonely, my father.
(Stars come walking across the sky,
the moon draws patterns over the meadow.
In this cold, falling dew,
my heart feels so alone, my mother…//)

Lallala laa.. laala laala lala
Lallala laa.. laala laala lala

Lulling me to sleep on a soft bed,
floating me on a bed of cotton down,

kissing my head, stroking my hair,
come and sit beside me, my father.

I’m lonely, my father.
(Stars come walking across the sky,
the moon draws patterns over the meadow.
In this cold, falling dew,
my heart feels so alone, my mother…//)

Lallala laa.. laala laala lala
Lallala laa.. laala laala lala

This is the theme song of the teledrama Kumi, and it is sung from the heart of a child who is missing their mother and father. There is no romance here, no grown-up longing. It is the simple, aching loneliness of a little one calling out into the night for the two people who are supposed to be there. The whole song is built around those two words a Sri Lankan child says first, “amme” (mother) and “appachchi” (father), and the song keeps returning to them like a small voice that cannot stop calling.

The child looks up at the night sky and sees stars wandering across it and the moon drawing soft patterns over the open meadow. It should be beautiful, but to a lonely child the cold and the falling dew only make the emptiness sharper. In Sinhala the night sky and the cool dew often stand for stillness and quiet, and here that quiet turns into the feeling of being left alone. The stars and the moon are out there, lovely and far away, while the one thing the child wants is right here at home, a parent close enough to touch.

Then the song turns into a kind of lullaby in reverse. Instead of a parent singing a child to sleep, the child is asking the parent to come and do it. Come and kiss my head, the child says, come and stroke my hair, come and rock me to sleep on a soft bed, float me to sleep on cotton down so soft it feels like clouds. Bathing the stars in moonlit water and holding coolness inside the clouds are tender, dreamlike images for the gentle, safe world a parent makes for a child at bedtime, the calm a mother or father wraps around you so you can drift off without fear. The child is describing exactly the comfort they no longer have.

What makes it hard to hear is that these are the smallest, most ordinary things, a kiss on the head, a hand in the hair, someone sitting beside the bed, and the child is begging for them because they are gone. The “lallala laa” that closes each part is the soft sound of a lullaby itself, the tune a parent hums, now sung by the child alone in the dark. You are left holding that picture of a small child under a wide, cold sky, asking the night to bring back the warmth of an amma and an appachchi.