Let us fly our flag high....

When you are in US, many things remind that you are alien to this place - food, transportation, people etc. There is one specific thing that keeps reminding me that I am in America, it is the US flag. You see it all around. Many people fly the US flag on their houses. Few cars have the flags flying in the front, while few have it painted all over their body. It might be fashionable for some, but most of them are passionate. A look at it reminds that you are in America.

Why don't we have our flags flying like this? Forget flying our flag in our country, people wear caps, t-shirts, kerchiefs etc with American flag on them. Recently I visited my friends place in US. I was surprised to see Indian flag pasted on the wall. But unfortunately it was placed in the opposite direction. How many of us know that the flag should be placed in such a way that it should be Saffron, White and Green from top to bottom and from left to right, as we just read any book(from top to bottom, left to right)? Many of us don't even know how to handle our national flag. It is just because we are not aware of it. If we have our flags displayed all around having it flying vertically, horizontally, left, right and center, every one would have got a clear picture what is correct and wrong.

I was discussing this with one of my Indian friends here in US; he said if we have our flags like this, we will be punished as our law says having them on dresses, houses etc is dishonoring the national flag. What? Is that true? I did a quick research on this and found many of his statements were false. We can have our flag printed on our dress which can be worn above the waist. Many of us don't know this (including me till I spent some time on it).

Last week I went to my client’s head office in New York City, where, on most of the streets I saw the American flag. On a bank building, I saw a big American flag covering the whole building. It was really nice to see such a huge flag, on a very big tower. You could see flags at gas stations (petrol bunks in India), railway stations, banks, shopping centers in fact at most of the places. It shows how passionate and proud these people are about their country. We could see our flags flying like this only on Aug 15 (Independence Day) and Jan 26 (Republic Day). Why can't we have it every day? Just imagine how it would be, having our national flag all around…

When I was a kid, if some one asks me to draw or paint some thing, my first choice would be a house and the next immediate option was our national flag. At times it was a mixed version of the both, a flag pole in front of the house. Even now I see many kids painting our flag with full joy, happiness and pride. They come running and yelling "see our national flag is flying high"…. Mmm… I wish to see our flag flying high as I see the US flag here.