Nearly every sixth person on this planet is an Indian. We are literally everywhere…
Except keyboards.
Ever noticed how the Indian Rupee sign, “₹” which was released by the Indian government in July 2010 hasn’t made much progress in the world of computers? Fortunately, most laptop and keyboard models that were made for Indian markets after 2010 have the symbol.
However, it is as inaccessible as the real ₹ bill in a Marwadi’s pocket. I have a Dell laptop from 2014, and the symbol is present in the bottom right corner of the 4-key.
But no one on the internet knows how to bring it to the screen.
After a thorough digging into what could almost qualify as the deep net (just kidding, I just went to Google’s second page of search results), I found the answer:
To type the ₹ symbol, one must go to the regional settings of the hardware keyboard in the control panel and make adjustments there: change from US English to English India. However, another discrepancy is that both of the symbols do not appear at the same time. Quite remarkable is the fact that despite vigorous Beta testing, such problems occur in internationally sold machines.
Then there is our beloved Whatsapp: which doesn’t offer the option of the ₹ at all! Remember that ugly chain message everyone was forwarding in 2014 about how the app must include the Indian Tricolor in the flags symbol collection? And when they did, the Independence day messages were so much more saffron, white, green and blue!
However, Indians are Indians. We get aggressive about one thing, and completely forget another – irrespective of the importance of either subject. How many of us noticed that Whatsapp is also missing the ₹ symbol? All those fancy currency symbols that we never touch (I mean, with no offense to our fellow Asian bros, but they even have a YEN sign!), but the one we possibly could is not even there. See…
Finally, let’s talk about Man’s best friend: the Smart phone. Be it Android’s nerdiest Samsung, or Apple’s much-panache iOS 9, do either of the in-built keyboards offer a rupee symbol? Not that I found. Us Indians have to make do with “INR”, which is too expensive to type, so we settle with jugaad in the form of “rs.” (pronounced: rupiss).
After all those public polls about selecting the right symbol, and then much mixed reviews about it thereafter, it seems like a waste that the world doesn’t even recognize the economic symbol of the world’s largest democracy’s currency. All that’s available are these:
Remember what Chatur said in 3idiots?
“(Dhan) hota sabke pass hai, dikhata koi nahi”
Well, Google and Microsoft have Indian “dhan”: Sundar (sa) Pichai and Satya Nadella. Yet, neither the Android keyboard nor the Microsoft Office has an easy way to type ₹.
The Indian rupee symbol is quite symbolic too. Designed by an architecture and design student from IIT Bombay, a lot of thought went into it. The two horizontal lines striking through the top represents the Indian national flag in a minimalist way. The curve itself is an amalgamation of the Hindi symbol “र” and the Latin alphabet “R”. So some appreciation would be nice, world!
Not to make something out of nothing, but don’t you think this is something to think about? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
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