Spelling bees rock the hive in Bangalore

The stage is set with nervous young students fidgeting about as their fate hangs on a single word. Audible gasps from parents in the audience and someone accidentally spells a word with an extra vowel. Game over.

The India Spell Bee competition was held on Sunday and students from classes I-X spelt words that would have left many adults gaping.

“From Bangalore, we had 8,200 students from 170 schools. Of that, we short-listed 240 students to take part in the pre-finals today. Only 16 students from four categories that are separated according to their classes, went on to take part in the finals, which was the oral part of the competition,” said the chief executive officer, India Spell Bee, R Shankar Narayan.

From words such as ‘syzygy’ to ‘pneumatic’, the young ones dazzled everyone with their prowess. “The winners of the four categories have qualified for the national-level spelling bee that will be held in April in Bangalore,” added Narayan.

Even parents got to show their skills as they attempted to spell words and solve puzzles. It was the Shetty-Mandyam family that impressed everyone in the competition. Sulekha Shetty and Kishore Mandyam won in parents’ rounds and their son, Ritvik Shetty Mandyam, a Class IV student from Vidyaniketan School, came first in Category 3, meant for classes V-VII students.

Ritvik, during the rapidfire round when contestants had to spell as many words as possible in under one minute, got 17 words right.
“We are a family that reads a lot and that’s how we are good with spellings. I think people who are good with their spellings generally will do better in their careers. But we don’t sit together and study the spellings at home, but this is an important skill to develop in children,” said Sulekha, adding that Ritvik regularly wins spelling competitions.  Other winners were Arjun Kiran Babu, Riddi Banerjee, and Reshma R.