Indian-American students cast a spell

Kansas-based 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar has spelled her way to the top 10 of the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the past three years in a row. She is among the favourites to win this year as the annual bee begins in earnest on Thursday in Washington with a record 288 spellers competing in the oral preliminary.

The bee concludes on Friday night with a widely watched prime-time finish on ABC Television. Bee watchers say the only returning spellers who can give Kavya a tough fight are a pair of home-schooled 13-year-olds, Tia Thomas and Mathew Evans, who have made it this far four times before. Indian American eight grader Sidharth Chand, 13, also finished ahead of Kavya last year. Vaibhav S Vavilala, 14, who plays the violin and loves Indian classical music is the dark horse.

“She’s feeling confident,” M Shivashankar, Kavya’s father and spelling coach said, as ESPN tipped “word-a-holic” Kavya as one of the favourites to win. “We’ll take this all one step at a time, but she’s doing well,” Shivashankar added as Kavya schmoozed with fellow spellers at a Bee’s Memorial Day Barbecue in Washington.

Kavya has Bee watchers rooting for her as girls have only won the competition twice in the last decade. Kavya has her sights on neurosurgery. Her heroine is Nupur Lala, who won the Bee in 1999 and was featured in the documentary Spellbound. Lala is now a research assistant in the brain and cognitive sciences lab at MIT.

Altogether there have been eight Indian-American Scripps National Spelling Bee champions, including six of the past 10. On the sucess by Indian children, Wall Street Journal columnist Tunku Varadarajan said: “There are certain cultures, particularly Asian ones, that produce child prodigies. Relentless parents goading their children to success at the youngest possible age.”