The South Asian Spelling Bee in the US grooms youngsters for the national competition. Sandip Roy enters a twilight world where memory is all
When I told my friend I was going to an Indian Spelling Bee, he said, “Is there any other kind?” It’s true. Indian Americans might not have too many sport stars or pop stars to crow about. But we have Kavya Shivshankar and Anamika Viramani, all spelling bee champions. “The spelling bee is our sport,” said Rahul Walia, the man who founded the Metlife South Asian Spelling Bee. Though Walia, son of an English professor, himself admits that he relies on Microsoft spell-checker for his spelling needs.
I met Walia on a warm Sunday afternoon at the Indian Community Center in the San Francisco Bay Area which was hosting the regional championship. I felt I was walking into a secret training camp for some elite South Asian spelling commando task force.
The written elimination rounds had just ended. True to stereotype, all 63 contestants had made it into the oral round. “If you were planning to leave early, call and cancel evening plans,” announced Walia.
Walia heads Touchdown Media Inc. which helps companies in the US reach the South Asian marketplace. He said he started the Bee because there were hundreds more South Asians wanting to try their luck at spelling bees than could make it at the mainstream national competition. “Here they get the encouragement of competing within their own peer group,” said Walia. Some of the competitors have gone on to compete and shine in the general spelling bee.
When national winner Kavya Shivshankar’s father came to the Metlife Bee with his younger daughter, he was mobbed like a celebrity. “We have seen a 60 per cent growth from year to year,” said Walia. The all-desi bee is now in its third year, spread over nine cities, shown on Sony television, pulling in some 700 wanna-bees.
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One of them is 13 year-old Akshay Aitha. He’s been doing this since he was six. He had a lucky T-shirt he used to wear but he has outgrown it. “I don’t necessarily like it,” he admitted. “It’s a lot of rote memorisation, kinda boring. But if I am good at it, why not do it?”
If Aitha is battle-scarred and a little cynical, eight-year-old first-timer Arjav Rawal is all wide-eyed. He watches all the competitions on television, and even records them. “I was spellbound,” he proclaimed. “Kavya Shivshankar is my role model.”
I wonder what strange twilight world I had entered where entire families sequestered themselves in an auditorium on a sunny Sunday afternoon to spell. Grandpa in a Cisco baseball cap took pictures with his camera phone. Dad in T-shirt and shorts texted updates. Mom wrote down all the words in a notebook (for future reference). Little sister lip-synched along. What I was watching was the desi spellers’ secret weapon in action — the family.
“Both parents are ferociously involved in the education system of the children,” explained Walia. Radha Subramaniam, whose son Mayank was competing, was more upfront. “Our backgrounds tend to force us to bang on our children’s heads until they do it,” she said.
And as more desis have won Bees, the pressure has grown. Mayank’s hands were clammy on the drive over, Subramaniam said. He came in second last year and is feeling the pressure this year, his last year in the competition. Subramaniam’s younger son is just four. He isn’t the spelling bee type but his mother said, “I feel, God, he has to do it because everyone is telling me to do it.”
I don’t know whether any of the words will stick with these children as they grow up. Will they ever use trephine or conniption? Will the desi spelling bee become a sort of coaching class for the national spelling bee? “I hope not,” said Walia. “We have been requested to have some workshops. But we are not a study platform.”
The bigger lesson, said one parent, isn’t in the words. “Many of these children are used to winning everything they touch,” said Sanjay Srivatsa. “It’s good to lose once or twice. Now and then a little reminder of humility and reality goes a long way.”
Srivatsa’s son lost. As did Subramaniam’s son Mayank. He shrugged when I asked him how he felt, “I don't sit with a dictionary eight hours a day like some others. I have other interests. TV. Sports.” This was his last Bee. He is aging out. I asked him what he’d learned. “A lot of words,” he said. Then he paused. “What I still haven’t learned is how to cope with failure.”
[Sandip Roy hosts a radio show, ‘New America Now’, in San Francisco]
