Yesterday the French guy in school became a citizen of Canada in a whole swearing-in ceremony. To commemorate, he put these two flags next to his bureau. I made a whole bunch of Quebec flag printouts (yes, we killed the Amazon rain forest... but it was for a good cause) and put it next to these two flags and had the other two guys, who are Quebecois, put the QC flags next to their bureaus too!! It was sort of in jest, I am very against any sort of nationalism and they all know this very well.
So they returned the jest, by printing out a Sri Lankan flag and putting it in my bureau...
So I explained the symbolism of the SL flag to these inquisitive Quebecois/Canadians: the orange stripe for the Hindus, the green for the Muslims, the yellow for the Buddhists (and the Christians really don't matter), the Lion because the Sinhalese people come from a lion according to legend (because really, Tamil people don't matter), the sword for authority (because in ancient times everyone was up for a good fight), the 4 bo-leaves for love, compassion, sympathy and equanimity... It has been a while since I thought about my flag... and couldn't help but think of how it is yet another symbol of division; the only part that now appealed to me, the four bo-leaves.
No comments:
Post a Comment