WASHINGTON: The Indian American domination of the US’s Scripps National Spelling Bee is intact with 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas winning the title — the seventh Indian to do so in the last 11 years.
Kavya disposed of with ease words like “laodicean”, “escritoire”, “hydrargyrum”, “blancmange” and “bouquiniste” to take home more than $ 40,000 in cash, prizes and scholarship.
Her winning word was “laodicean”, which means being lukewarm or indifferent to religion or politics.
Kavya aspires to become a neurosurgeon. She enjoys playing the violin, bicycling, swimming and learning Indian classical dance, and her role model is Nupur Lala, the 1999 champion featured in the documentary “Spellbound”.
Her father and coach Mirle Shivashankar said she might now turn to “Brain Bee”, a science- oriented contest.
Another Indian girl, Aishwarya Pastapur from Illinois, finished third in the competition, behind 12-year-old Tim Ruiter from Virginia.
But the upset of the evening was when Sidarth Chand, last year’s runner-up, misspelled the word “apodyterium”.
The Indian merry run in the 82-year-old competition began in 1999, when Nupur Lala won.
George Thampy followed her next year. Pratyush Buddiga was the winner in 2002, Sai Gunturi in 2003, Anurag Kashyap in 2005 and Sameer Mishra in 2008. The first Indian American to win the title was Balu Natarajan of Chicago, back in 1985, followed by Rageshree Ramachandran in 1987.