Mumbai-based teenager Pingla More had an extraordinarily joyous Children’s Day (November 14) last year when she discovered that the world’s most popular search engine Google displayed her creative doodle on space exploration on its home page, to mark Children’s Day celebrations countrywide.
One of twin daughters of Rupali, an ayurveda doctor, and Rahul More, a corporate executive, this class VIII student of the state board-affiliated J.B. Vachha High School bested 75,000 entries from across India to be crowned the Doodle4Google national champion and was awarded a Rs.5 lakh higher education scholarship. Pingla’s school also received a Rs.2 lakh technology award.
Organised by Google India since 2009, this annual online competition — open to students of classes I-X countrywide — encourages children to imagine and create a theme-based logo for its home page on Children’s Day. Last year’s theme was ‘my inspiration’.
The doodles submitted were adjudicated by a four-member jury (Ryan Germick, team leader Doodle at Google, art & crafts celebrity, Harun Robert, Arun Iyer, chairman Lowe Lintas ad agency and Sejal Kumar, a popular YouTube programs creator) who assessed the artistic skill, ideation, representation of theme and use of alphabets in the Google logo. Twenty entries shortlisted by the jury were then posted for online voting by viewers. Following a round of interviews and presentations by the finalists at Google’s Gurgaon office, the national winner and five category winners were announced on October 23.
Pingla’s doodle titled ‘Galaxy, Space Exploration’ depicts a little girl looking through a telescope on a dark night with comets, planets, rockets, constellations and galaxies making up the word Google.
This graphic artist is set on a career in fine arts after completing her Plus Two. “Visiting the Google India headquarters after winning the Google4Doodle contest has boosted my confidence levels sky-high. Right now, I want to participate in as many creative art competitions as I can,” enthuses Pingla More.
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
