She spelled her way to the top!

[Written on 5/29/2009]

It was down to Ramya Auroprem, Aiswarya Pastapur, Kavya Shivshankar, Anamkia Veeramani, a boy of Chinese academics, Kenyi the son of the African immigrants, and Tim the lonely, all American white boy - the final 7 to get the crown of the Annual spelling competition last night.

Do you see the striking similarity? It's 6 out of 7 kids - yes, all first generation - with their hard accented parents watching them perform at the national stage in the land of oppurtunities, with gleaming pride in their face and tears of uncontrollable joy.

While the delayed broadcast (though mentioned as "live") was going on in ABC, I switched back and forth to the Fox channel - the last standing bastion of the American Pride - to see their reaction. They were just short of doing all dirty tricks to get the first-gens getting disqualified. Background records were unearthed to see any misspelling their parents did in their Visa or Green Card applications while coming to US. If an immigrant misspelled something in their application then it could be used as a challenge to disqualify their kids from competing in the spelling bee.

Karl, Rush, Cheney! help me out! Would you have done to protect our linguistic heritage? What? you guys don't know nothing.

Then it came down to the final three: Kavya, Aiswarya and Tim. America's hopes of restoring its pride rested heavily on Tim, when he was handling the assault by the immigrant challengers - or, in Rush's words - kids of the Slumdogs - with a sense of comfort and ease, hard to see in a 13 year old.

While the top 3 contenders were down to the final 25 word list, I could see the scenes from the movie "Akeela and the Bee", where the climax was getting down to the surival of the fittest. I thought, all the three would spell all the way to share the glory. But, Aiswarya missed out "Menhir" (trust me, it is lot easier to see the words in TV when those kids struggle to construct them from the etymology and sounds.). How could you not cry, when you are a parent - not necessarily hers - to see a girl's, what might have been a life long quest - go down in that 6 syllable word, after coming thus far.

It was Tim and Kavya. Would they spell all the words correctly to share the prize? Would Kavya and Tim replay the roles of Akeela Anderson and Dylan Chiu, understanding the pains of each other to get to that moment of
glory where in Captain Kirk's words, "few humans have gone before."

Seemed like the melodramatic moments of movies are not for real life. After all kids are kids. They want to compete hard. They want to win. Tim misspelled the word, that I don't even know how to write!

She was alone...all alone. One word correct and that's it. She would be the next champion. The word was "Laodicean". On hearing the word her face lit up like a stranded mariner seeing the land. She did the formal questioning: What is the origin? (In her mind, "I know it!") What is the usage? (In her mind, "Are you kidding?") What is the meaning? ("Joy of seeing my years of hard work come to fruition.")

She smiled...took a breath...and delivered... correctly.

I could sense a great sigh of relief from her parents seated behind: Thank goodness, no more spelling bee meets!!

Kayva wins after her fourth attempt - finishing 10th, 8th and 4th in the prior years. This is a young woman with a mission.

Hats off to you young lady! You have made yet another parent proud!