THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the Rupee finally gets a global face and identity, a computer teacher from small town Thalassery in the state has enough to be proud of - he was among the final five whose symbols were shortlisted.
After giving it some thought, Shibin KK, a school teacher by profession but a designer at heart, had arrived at his symbol from the Devanagari consonant ‘Ra’, also representing ‘R’ in Rupee.
“The richness of our tradition and culture had to be reflected in the symbol, so the Devanagari consonant was chosen," he justified. "Also, the abstract ‘R’ gives the symbol an international standard and appeal," he says.
Though the same was the logic behind the basic structure of Udaya Kumar’s symbol which was chosen ultimately, Shibin had a different idea further.
“In the symbol that I suggested, the two strokes in the forward inclined direction symbolise stable positive growth," he says, whereas in the winner’s symbol, the strokes represented ‘equal to’. The final five was chosen from among 3,000 entries.
“We shared the ideas with each other as we assembled to make our presentations. Interestingly, all five of us had adopted Devanagari consonant ‘Ra’ as the basic structure of the symbols," he said.
Predictably, the task was not a cakewalk for the jury as they had to choose one from the five, all of which were similar, with only minor alterations at the placement of the strokes.
Though the government notification said that a maximum of two symbols could be sent by a person, Shibin decided to stick to just one.
Almost seven months after he sent his design, he received a letter from Delhi inviting him to make a presentation before the jury at the Reserve Bank of India in New Delhi on December 15. So what could be the reason for his near miss?
He believes that one reason could be his symbol’s ‘proximity’ to the letter ‘R’ than to Devanagari ‘Ra’. The jury asked him about the key factor which should strike the mind of the common man on seeing the symbol.
“I replied that it was ‘R’ which should strike the eyes and not ‘Ra’, may be because of our poor association with Hindi in this part of the country," he said, seemingly distraught about missing it between the cup and the lip.