Independence Day celebrations at USC

There is a sizable Indian student population at University of Southern California - over a thousand in number. Independence day had been coming up and I thought it would good to organize an Independence day celebration event at USC. One thing necessary for the independece day celebrations is flag hoisting outdoors and as far as I knew there was only one location in USC with a flag post in the outdoors - an open air auditorium behind the annenburgh school of communication. Also this place was free, in other words we would not have to raise funds to reserve the place. I went ahead and reserved it for saturday, Aug 18th, morning 9:00 A.M. I sent out a mail that week to an Indian Students Forum that we were celebrating the Indian . We needed some people who would sing some patriotic songs etc. to make it a bonafide celebration. I contacted some of my friends Bhuvana and Vidhya - a trained karnatic classical singer and Vaibhav an untrained but talented singer. I planned to play the Sitar. So we would atleast have a few songs and performances. I also went ahead and bought sweets for about 50 people. Buhavana also decided to write up a small speech and recite. So things were looking up. Then I sent out an email on the Indian Students Forum saying that Independence day celebrations were on Saturday, Aug 18th at the venue and anyone who wanted to sing or say something etc was welcome. I had an Indian flag with me, so we could do the hoisting. I also got some flowers for the flag, so that when the flag was hoisted, flowers would fall. I had seen this being done each time in my school as I was growing up. I had never done a flag hoisiting before and didn't know how to tie up the flag so that the flowers fell. I hoped that I would figure it out on the day. That was it!
After the email, some other people responded. For example, a tabla player and some other people interested in singing. We met once and decided on a few patriotic songs

My friends and I reached the venue at 8:30 and cleaned up the place of leaves to make it more presentable. One of the people had served as a scout and knew how to tie up the flag with flowers in it so that they would fall upon reacing the top. He did that. At 9:30 we started the celebrations with the national anthem. There were 15 singers on stage and about 50 others who had joined us. I did the flag hoisting. A group of singers sand Vandemataram and Aiye mere vatan je logon. Vaibhav also sang a couple of partiotic songs. I played raga kafi, Alap and Dhruth followed by a Dhun accompanied by the tabla player. Bhuvana sang a Karnatic Classical piece. Then there was sweets distribution and everything went very well.

Over all I felt very happy that even while in US, I could celebrate the Indian Independence day.