HUMOUR
Spellbound
INDU BALACHANDRAN
|
It is nerve-wracking to follow an extreme sport like the Spelling Bee contest.
|
IN an age of sms wrds and ez splngs (some schools I hear are even teaching short text words in their curriculum), who on earth would be interested in a reality TV show called the Spelling Bee?
I was. Sitting up late night tuned in to in ESPN, with the same nail-chewing suspense of watching a Zidane or a Klose. Only I was watching a Close this time: Katherine Close — an incredible 13 year old from New Jersey — who effortlessly spelt "urspache" before a live world audience in the 2006 Spelling Championship of the United States. And won.
Richer by a few words
You probably won't even find this word in your dictionary at home, but I can now proudly say I know the definition of "urspache" — it means "a parent language" — though I have no idea how to use it in a sentence and stun people with my brilliance.
And I can also tell you the spelling and meaning of "appoggiatura" — it means a melodic tune — for, this was the winning word last year. And won by the predictable Indian kid growing up in the U.S.
That's why I say, so what if Indians are nowhere in World Cup football — we are out there dominating the field of words, skilfully tackling and scoring in this extreme sport. And as proof of world dominance by Indians, here was young Samir Patel, three years in the finals, and last year's runner up, effortlessly getting past "thymiaterion" to deafening applause.
What is it about young Indian kids growing up in the U.S. that makes them so good at spelling words, I wondered. Well for many South Indians in the finals, it is probably the ease of spelling their own complicated surnames like Ananthapadhmanababalasubramaniam right from nursery school that gives them some early training.
And this year's favourite, apart from the high sense of expectation from the brilliant Samir Patel, was Tarigopula Rajiv. As his proud doctor-parents looked on, Rajiv went from rubasse to sporran to phalarope to gallinaceous with astounding confidence.
Secretly proud that I am quite a good speller myself (I feel the spell-check on my comp is for sissies) I sat with my writing pad ready to compete with mere kids from middle school.
Well, I must say the first word I wrote down was a breeze! It was izzat. Got it! Despite the fact that the American official called it out as "is-et". The American girl needed just one clue: a word of Urdu origin meaning respect.
Depressing score
Alas! My score remained there, at 1, for the next 18 words because one had to know Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Yiddish, not to mention the occasional Hindi root word, to work out these weird words!
Just as I began to feel a wave of weltshmerz (a 12-year-old had just got that word meaning "mental depression"), there came another word I knew! Kundalini! Well. Katherine spelt it out in half the time I did. The next word we heard was "writer". Impossible! Then came the meaning: a yoghurt preparation in Indian restaurants. "R-a-i-t-a" of course. Unfortunately it went to an all-American, pizza-eating kid and he got foxed with that one and spelt it wrong.
Two rounds later, I was convinced these were aliens here. How on earth would any human hear `shalto' and correctly spell it as "s-c-i-o-l-t-o"? Or hear what clearly sounded to me as "sita cease `im!" and then correctly spell it out as "p-s-i-t-t-a-c-i-s-m"?
I cheered the Indians on: Nidarshan Subra Anandasivam who got festucine, and Kavya Shivashankar, the youngest of them all, who'd just turned 10, easily getting past gigerium! During a break, I heard about the inevitable that follows any gripping sport: betting. And it seemed like many had their money on the Indian kids.
Look at the statistics in their favour: in the last seven years, 5 of the winners were of Indian origin! A trend that set in ever since Balu Natarajan became the very first Indian to win the Spelling Bee in 1985, inspiring hundreds of NRIs in America to start coaching their kids for this bloodless sport. The contest has also inspired two full length feature films, "The Bee Season" and "Spellbound", about the intense preparation and stress that families go through at the National Championships at Washington.
Standing ovation
In the game's final rounds, there was a very audible gasp of dismay amongst the generally stoic crowd, as the rank favourite, Tarigopula Rajiv, got tripped with one of the toughest words in the contest: heiligenshein. He got a standing ovation from the entire audience. Even from me. The game went into a nerve-wracking, all-girls, final three — and then Katherine Close went home with the $42,000 Spelling Bee prize.
Meanwhile, I am ready to impress the world with many amazing words like maieutic and dasyphyllous and oeillade and sprachgefuhl, which a bunch of middle school children have just introduced me to.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
