New Rupee Symbol and What Rupee Symbolizes?

 Had been reading about new Rupee symbol since few days!!! As they say it’s a sign of progress as per the news which helps to maintain a balance between economies internally and with other economies.


But almost 500 years after Sher Shah Suri who gave the currency which has been popular not only in India but also in the neighboring countries too and now India has came up with a standard symbol.

Few interesting things to ponder is how come this  symbol is going to get adapted on to our daily life, We have  dollar symbol on our key board, so would this also find a way on our key board  that would be interesting…if something that comes to your mind is special characters then that is quite expected on MS-Word.

Now getting to the main topic on What Rupee Symbolizes - thoughts on which kept wandering since sometime...

As described in various places Rupee to be symbol of prosperity something that comes to mind is Rupee or any currency for that matter had eventually put an end to barter system. Did it make much sense - not too sure but read along why did I say that??

In barter system if I am not mistaken the valuation of things was with respect to things around that we planned to exchange, so since there was specialization in society, people produced stuffs according to their professions and exchanged it in lieu of other thing they needed for daily life. Life was simple and restricted to basic thing and needs of life. So not sure if there were people who produced more things than they need or need to exchange with something else they need.

But now since in the age that we live we have currency we just run behind accumulating our respective currencies much more than our basic needs or even wants for that matter.

Long back I had seen a documentary on Discovery channel where Adivasis of some region visited the city region for the first time and they had asked a question to the city people - simple but fair, “Why do many people here have to sleep on the streets in such cold climate when there are many houses around?” For us it many seem to be a stupid question but there was strong reason they asked this question. In city of the life that we live in we strongly have stuff like “My house”, “My Car”,  “My Money ” so much so that people in same house have their own “My stuffs”. But in contrast they perhaps there had everything as “ours” Of course “Ours” was implicit since “My” wasn’t explicit... lol!!

In their place generally they would need an additional home when some of their children get married or they have children or so on… So what they do is simple everyone around gathers collects material like wood and stuff and build a house for them. So essentially all the families stay just around themselves! And it’s not my home or his home rather everything pertaining to a family is everyone’s responsibility. Say it old thoughts or something but didn’t they perhaps end up having more contented life than us - The so called superior generation :D ?


If I am not wrong about the source I had read once in Sudha Murthy’s Book once, that she visited similar Adivaasi  or tribal community part of her social work where the old head of the community mentioned  - “How can one think of dividing and naming the mountains and lands to our selves when it’s not at all our creation ?” (Not sure abt the exact words)  As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we are doing!


As they say the civilization is growing and we are becoming more intelligent - not sure if it really is but we surely think so again not too sure if the wisdom in us is growing!!!  If not more as we can feel aren’t we lesser happier than people few generations before us. ?



PS – Not that I am unhappy about anything but just pondering if older generations were more happier, now again happiness means different to different people, Its relative, what say? ;-)