<p>Despite having no credentials in the field of art or design, the announcement of the contest last April excited me. I stirred my shallow reserve of creativity and laboured for days with a pencil and an eraser. I studied the finance ministry guidelines. Among other things, it was clearly mentioned that the “symbol should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country.” <br /><br />So as the first logical step, I set out to make a list of everything that qualified as the ‘historical and cultural ethos” of India. The Taj Mahal was clearly the first that came up in mind but I rejected it as it wouldn’t satisfy the other conditions to figure in a symbol. <br /><br />For the same reason the snake charmer, temple gopuram, elephant with a howdah, Bengal Tiger, Indian rope trick, fakir on a bed of nails, yoga pose, and a host of other quintessentially Indian images had to be discarded.<br /><br />After hours of deliberation, I just had one entry in the list. And that was the Zero. It seemed to fit the bill perfectly. <br /><br />As the great Indian contribution to mathematics, not only did zero represent India, it could also be easily incorporated in a symbol. Yet it was very unsatisfactory to proceed to design a composite symbol based on just one parameter. So I kept up with my search for other, typically Indian things that would lengthen the list. <br /><br />As it happened to Archimedes, my Eureka moment too came in a bathroom. Not at home but in an outstation lodge. With my glasses off, I first took them to be some new kind of design on the wall tiles. But on closer examination I realised that they were sticker bindis. Sticker bindis of every shade and size, that had been taken off and stuck on the wall tile before having a bath by scores of thrifty but forgetful women.<br /><br />Here was the second, undisputably Indian, modern invention that also represented our cultural ethos. Since the typical bindi too is a round, I ‘zero’ed in on my design. It is a freehand oval, with two forward slashes trisecting it (as in the flag).<br /></p>
<p>Despite having no credentials in the field of art or design, the announcement of the contest last April excited me. I stirred my shallow reserve of creativity and laboured for days with a pencil and an eraser. I studied the finance ministry guidelines. Among other things, it was clearly mentioned that the “symbol should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country.” <br /><br />So as the first logical step, I set out to make a list of everything that qualified as the ‘historical and cultural ethos” of India. The Taj Mahal was clearly the first that came up in mind but I rejected it as it wouldn’t satisfy the other conditions to figure in a symbol. <br /><br />For the same reason the snake charmer, temple gopuram, elephant with a howdah, Bengal Tiger, Indian rope trick, fakir on a bed of nails, yoga pose, and a host of other quintessentially Indian images had to be discarded.<br /><br />After hours of deliberation, I just had one entry in the list. And that was the Zero. It seemed to fit the bill perfectly. <br /><br />As the great Indian contribution to mathematics, not only did zero represent India, it could also be easily incorporated in a symbol. Yet it was very unsatisfactory to proceed to design a composite symbol based on just one parameter. So I kept up with my search for other, typically Indian things that would lengthen the list. <br /><br />As it happened to Archimedes, my Eureka moment too came in a bathroom. Not at home but in an outstation lodge. With my glasses off, I first took them to be some new kind of design on the wall tiles. But on closer examination I realised that they were sticker bindis. Sticker bindis of every shade and size, that had been taken off and stuck on the wall tile before having a bath by scores of thrifty but forgetful women.<br /><br />Here was the second, undisputably Indian, modern invention that also represented our cultural ethos. Since the typical bindi too is a round, I ‘zero’ed in on my design. It is a freehand oval, with two forward slashes trisecting it (as in the flag).<br /></p>