Ektara Home

 

What is Ektara

Who are we

What we do

What we did so far

Our Products

Contact us

Links

Dosti ka PaighamDosti ka Paigham

A Message of Goodwill
(An Audio CD)

A family from Maharashtra reaches out to the people of Pakistan with a message of love

Songs written and composed by Yogendra Jawadekar
Sung by Aalaap, Aarohee, Yogendra and Savita

Ektara group finds great pleasure in introducing the Jawadekar family from Maharashtra, whose long-term dream has been to compose and sing friendly songs for the people of Pakistan which they have been yearning to visit since some time. Urdu is not their primarily language and music not their profession, yet they learned both to simply communicate their passionate feelings to their friends across the border. Their language and rendering may not be sophisticated, but it is their intention that is more important, especially keeping in mind the place they hail from. The Ektara group feels proud to be their messenger.

Here a sample from the audio CD. (Download mp3 file by "Right-click" and "Save link as...")

To order the CD, please write to ektaraindia@email.com or use this form to send your request.

About these songs:
The last quarter of a century has been very important in the history of the world. The Berlin wall collapsed. The apartheid in South Africa ended. The people of different countries in Europe buried their past of bitterly fought wars and came together as a Union. The nature of Indo-Pak border also started changing. I have always believed that the borders should exist only for administrative convenience. The wall of hatred between the people of India and Pakistan should be demolished, and hopefully as a people's movement. Becoming a part of this movement has been my dream. My wife and I are medical practitioners, working at Badlapur, a distant suburb of Mumbai, Maharashtra. People of different religions, languages, cultures from all over India have migrated to this town over the last decade. The nature of our profession allows us to interact with all of them on a daily basis. They mingle with each other, help each other in need, celebrate each other's festivals, and in fact, occasionally, even get married outside their caste, linguistic group or religion.

Jawadekar familyWhat the people taught me is that even though I am proud to be an Indian, I need not have animosity for any other country. I am proud of my Hindu cultural heritage, but need not look down upon any other religion. I believe that ordinary people think inclusively, are loving by nature, and prefer peace by default, unless instigated by the political, religious or ethnic 'leaders' for their own vested interests! Why would a common man in Pakistan want a common man in India harassed? For that matter, why would any ordinary person want to trouble any ordinary person elsewhere? I wanted to reassure my counterpart on the other side of the border that if s/he had no enmity for me, I had no hostile feelings for her/him. In fact, not only can we live in peace and harmony, but could even compel our 'leaders' to find lasting political solutions for political friendship.

I wanted to convey this to the common man across the border. I knew that Urdu ghazal could be an excellent medium of communication.  Though I did occasionally write lyrics for an amateur Marathi group, Urdu was not my language. Though singing was our hobby, we were not professional singers.  Nevertheless I decided to utilize these skills. I attended a workshop on ghazal writing and tried to be technically as sound as possible. But my idea was clear - the message was more important than the language, the compositions or the recording. Members of the group Ektara understood the genuine feelings behind the 'paigham' and decided to publish it against all odds, in spite of our work being highly unprofessional. I thank them, particularly Yousuf Saeed, from the bottom of my heart for taking the paigham to the people whom it is supposed to reach.

Yogendra Jawadekar