WHY DO COINS GIVE ME A HEADACHE?
V.S.Gopalakrishnan
From the time we are nearly 5 years old, we handle coins. We handle them every day of our life, the way we handle tooth brush, tooth paste, comb, hair oil etc every day. In the recent years, coins have become a source of headache for me!
I am unable to differentiate between coins. They all look alike despite different denominations. The size is very similar. The bright silvery colour is uniform since perhaps no brass or bronze is used nowadays and I guess they are all made of stainless steel. In olden times, colour variations were there due to the use of brass and bronze, apart from the size variations. Often, I am in no mood to go searching for my reading glasses. It is then that when paying out some changes, I grope like a blind beggar. The coins confuse me and I go into a headache! I congratulate the Marxist mentality of the present day RBI coin-minters who believe in near-perfect equality in the colour and the sizes of coins!
To avoid hassles in selecting the right coins to pay, I usually have been paying in rupee notes. That way, I take the change from the vendor, rather blindly without verification! And over a period of time, I have now made a huge collection of change weighing half a kilo! So, I am now compelled to think of letting the half-kilo load of my coins vanish! For that, I have to make payments in coins. I am at square one again! I hate to invite headache by having to select from the confusing coins!
When I was a youngster I loved coins. Not just for their purchasing power in buying “kamarkat” ( a kind of sweet) but for their lovely variety too. The quarter anna had a fascinating hole in it! Sixteen annas made one rupee. The one anna was strong and had a wavy circumference. Blindly touching the quarter anna or one anna coin, you can tell the denomination. The two annas were square in shape. I suppose the designers and minters had a much higher IQ in those years than now. A sightless person now would find it hard to differentiate between the denominations.
above:one pice coin (a quarter anna)
one anna coin
two anna coin
I must have started handling coins from 1945 or so. I clearly remember the size, colour and shape of those coins. But the minters used to change the metal composition and the sizes once in a few years. Nothing was static.
I remember I was most upset when India went into metric system of coinage in 1955. One ”naya paisa” became the basic unit and a hundred naya paisas made a rupee. I considered the use of the Hindi word “naya” as a needless infliction of Hindi on the South! The “naya” was dropped in 1964. The two rupee coin was introduced in 1982. Now we have five rupee coins too. There was a time when 5 paise, 10 paise and 25 paise coins came in handy for us but nowadays I don’t see even 50 paise coins. The basic denomination of exchange has become the one rupee coin! So much for inflation and devaluation!
Today, in a bit of a research mind, I segregated firstly the two rupee current coins from my half-kilo coin collection. I examined them closely. Some years ago, a cross-mark appeared in the coins as shown below.
2-rupee coin with a cross
Some people said that it was Sonia Gandhi’s idea of spreading Christianity. Then, I find that a hand appears in the 2-rupee coins of 2007 to 2011, with two fingers raised! Some people saw the hand-emblem of the Congress party there! Art-wise the quality is absurd! It is a female hand with bangles showing a dance mudra without taste! The fingers are stiff and the owner of the hand is perhaps asking by gesture permission to go to the toilet! (please see below)
2-rupee coin with dance mudra
The latest 2012 two-rupee coin bearing the new “rupee emblem” has shrunk in size, resembling the size of the common one rupee coin.
The design pattern of one-rupee coins has been similar. Half-a- decade ago, you saw the cross. Then the dance mudra with just the thumb raised, looking unaesthetic! (please see below). The size of one-rupee coin has shrunk in the last one year, to that of 50 paise! The 50-paise coin shows a closed fist and I wonder if there is any such dance mudra at all or it could be the fist of a woman boxer!
one rupee coin with just one thumb up!
closed-fist dance mudra? Or boxing?
So, now, you realize my confusion that leads on to headache when I handle our coins!
=====================================
V.S.Gopalakrishnan
From the time we are nearly 5 years old, we handle coins. We handle them every day of our life, the way we handle tooth brush, tooth paste, comb, hair oil etc every day. In the recent years, coins have become a source of headache for me!
I am unable to differentiate between coins. They all look alike despite different denominations. The size is very similar. The bright silvery colour is uniform since perhaps no brass or bronze is used nowadays and I guess they are all made of stainless steel. In olden times, colour variations were there due to the use of brass and bronze, apart from the size variations. Often, I am in no mood to go searching for my reading glasses. It is then that when paying out some changes, I grope like a blind beggar. The coins confuse me and I go into a headache! I congratulate the Marxist mentality of the present day RBI coin-minters who believe in near-perfect equality in the colour and the sizes of coins!
To avoid hassles in selecting the right coins to pay, I usually have been paying in rupee notes. That way, I take the change from the vendor, rather blindly without verification! And over a period of time, I have now made a huge collection of change weighing half a kilo! So, I am now compelled to think of letting the half-kilo load of my coins vanish! For that, I have to make payments in coins. I am at square one again! I hate to invite headache by having to select from the confusing coins!
When I was a youngster I loved coins. Not just for their purchasing power in buying “kamarkat” ( a kind of sweet) but for their lovely variety too. The quarter anna had a fascinating hole in it! Sixteen annas made one rupee. The one anna was strong and had a wavy circumference. Blindly touching the quarter anna or one anna coin, you can tell the denomination. The two annas were square in shape. I suppose the designers and minters had a much higher IQ in those years than now. A sightless person now would find it hard to differentiate between the denominations.
above:one pice coin (a quarter anna)
I must have started handling coins from 1945 or so. I clearly remember the size, colour and shape of those coins. But the minters used to change the metal composition and the sizes once in a few years. Nothing was static.
I remember I was most upset when India went into metric system of coinage in 1955. One ”naya paisa” became the basic unit and a hundred naya paisas made a rupee. I considered the use of the Hindi word “naya” as a needless infliction of Hindi on the South! The “naya” was dropped in 1964. The two rupee coin was introduced in 1982. Now we have five rupee coins too. There was a time when 5 paise, 10 paise and 25 paise coins came in handy for us but nowadays I don’t see even 50 paise coins. The basic denomination of exchange has become the one rupee coin! So much for inflation and devaluation!
Today, in a bit of a research mind, I segregated firstly the two rupee current coins from my half-kilo coin collection. I examined them closely. Some years ago, a cross-mark appeared in the coins as shown below.
Some people said that it was Sonia Gandhi’s idea of spreading Christianity. Then, I find that a hand appears in the 2-rupee coins of 2007 to 2011, with two fingers raised! Some people saw the hand-emblem of the Congress party there! Art-wise the quality is absurd! It is a female hand with bangles showing a dance mudra without taste! The fingers are stiff and the owner of the hand is perhaps asking by gesture permission to go to the toilet! (please see below)
The latest 2012 two-rupee coin bearing the new “rupee emblem” has shrunk in size, resembling the size of the common one rupee coin.
The design pattern of one-rupee coins has been similar. Half-a- decade ago, you saw the cross. Then the dance mudra with just the thumb raised, looking unaesthetic! (please see below). The size of one-rupee coin has shrunk in the last one year, to that of 50 paise! The 50-paise coin shows a closed fist and I wonder if there is any such dance mudra at all or it could be the fist of a woman boxer!
So, now, you realize my confusion that leads on to headache when I handle our coins!
=====================================
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