Rupee symbol and my sour grape syndrome
I like a lot of things about the new Indian Rupee symbol except for the line in the middle that almost looks like an imitation of euro or Yen.
Well, it is also a story of the fox crying ‘sour grapes’ for me. As everyone would know at least by now that there was a competition announced by the Govt of India for the public to submit designs for the symbol. The Govt should have outsourced this entire event to a private company, the public hardly knew about such a competition. Even the announcement and the winner were not well publicized or celebrated…I still remember the way Euro’s symbol was announced.
I came to know of the competition just about a few weeks before the last day and tried my imagination on it, of course trying to follow the rules published in a little pdf file in the governemnt’s web-site still available here. One of the confusing guidelines was #5 “The symbol should be applicable to standard keyboard. The symbol has to be in the Indian National Language Script or a visual representation.”. Not many (I did talk to others who read this or forced a few of my friends to read and interpret it to me) understood this and the general thought was that it wanted the design to use keys available on the standard keyboard…so with these mis-understandings, me on the drawing board came up with my symbol and write up, see below how close/far it is from the winner.
Constraining my imagination for the guidelines, my version used “R”, “” and “.” of standard keyboard (of course must need some Fn/Ctrl software control to place them right)
My key points on my design write-up were:
- R – stands for ‘Rupee’ with the “” tail when seen ignoring the vertical left leg resembles the hindi ‘Ru’ for ‘Rupiah’
- The vertical leg of ‘R’ stands for ‘I’ or India, together it is Indian Rupee.
- The dot on top has the deepest meaning.This dot is a salute to all the women of India who have been the little finance ministers of every home for centuries as a wife, mother, sister or granny. They indirectly run the nation. Coincidentally, the country has a woman as the President when this symbol is released. So it is appropriate to salute our women in a symbol that will represent our country everyday all over the world henceforth.
Though I kick myself for losing the opportunity but there’s no one to blame it on but me. This went down like an untold Love. Yes, I never submitted my design, it was my laziness to run around visiting banks for the Rs. 500 demand draft to be sent that made me not send this entry. A great lesson, one among many others to remind me that you cannot expect the fruit unless you move your feet and participate first…lest end up crying ‘sour grape’
Know about the competition now..must thank you for it!
The symbol created by you is really good and gains greater significance after one reads the explanation that goes with it.
You would have been a close contestant for D. Uday Kumar and your design , one of the five symbols that were shortlisted.
All water under the bridge now! and I am worrying about the lost opportunity of bragging about knowing the designer of the symbol!!
Ganesh, I din't know that you are blogging and got to see this first time.
I wish you continue this after your wedding as well:-)
awesome blog, do you have twitter or facebook? i will bookmark this page thanks. lina holzbauer