India's Independence Day - How to make a flag!

[Flag folks: Aloke, Payal, Diana, Gurdish and Me]

Happy Independence Day!!! August 15th is here and with that we ring in the celebrations ...I will be celebrating it at our office with a pot-luck lunch where all our co-workers are invited.

The best part was the prep work ...the emails, the invites, the cooking and ofcourse the flag making!!! We wanted to have a flag that would inspire the Indians around, and since we could not buy it - I was a little sceptical about making one since 'painting' it on a cloth was kinda best left to the professionals.

Humm... when in doubt, walk to Walmart!

We did and after examining a range of house paints, some lame car spray paints, some acrylic stuff and some oils - we caught a glimpse of some cool looking 'cloth' peices(I'll give Diana the credit for that) ...you know in the PERFECT saffron, white and green shades. They were in rolls where their width was about 4ft and length was all wrapped around ... we got a foot of length cut for each (so we had 3 peices 4 ft x 1ft) but before we got it - what really sealed the deal was the 'iron based glue'.


[Drawing the 'Chakra']

...go figure we cannot 'stitch' clothes to save our lives. So our best option was some crazy-glue (messy) or something better....which was exactly what this thing was. It is a roll of 'sticky' tape like stuff with paper on it ...you set the paper end up on the base cloth and you iron it. Then you remove the paper, put the other cloth on top and iron the two together! Viola!


We freakin' had a flag! Our eyes lit up when the three joined to form the familiar 'Tirangaa' ...it was a poignant moment, when we all looked at the 'flag' in awe. It did not have the 'chakra' yet but it still inspired us! One can only imagine how much it has inspired others over the ages ....

[The Finished Product]

...ok the funnier moments came when we started arguing about the 'chakra' and its significance ...one of the 'unnamed' person suggested it was actually the 'charkhaa' (like the one Gandhiji used to make cotton threads) and not the chakra ...correct but that was in the earlier congress flag. Right?

Okay more research on the flag coming up ....