Last week, 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar from West Lafayette won the Scripps National Spelling Bee contest in the US. The event was covered by primetime television. Incidentally, this was Shivashankar’s fourth trial at the contest. Sameer Mishra won it last year.
Finishing third this year was another prodigious 13-year-old Indian, Aishwarya Pastapur. Overall, Shivashankar is the eighth Indian-American to have won this contest — the first was Balu Natarajan of Chicago, Illinois, who won it in 1985. Thereafter, there was no looking back. Rageshree Ramachandran won it in 1987, followed by Nupur Lala in 1999, George Thampy in 2000, Pratyush Buddiga in 2002, Sai Gunturi in 2003, Anurag Kashyap in 2005 and Sameer Mishra in 2008.
Too bad we don’t have anything equivalent in India, to show off home-grown talent. The prize includes US$35,000 in cash and US$5,000 in other prizes. However more than the money, it is the prestige attached to the contest that guarantees placement in one of the leading colleges and a smooth career landing thereafter.
Interestingly, 14 Indian semifinalists had figured in a list of 41 semifinalists out of the total 293 competitors who participated this year. Those who watched Shivashankar’s performance on television felt completely blown away by her word dexterity — she kept spelling out every word on her palm!
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