Desi Kid Wins THE Spelling Bee................AGAIN!

OOPS! WE did it again...... and again......yeah, another desi kid spelt his way to the rarified mnemonic paradise, that most middle class Indians esteem more than Shangri-La. The one supreme achievement, that signifies the acceptance by mainstream America of the all kinds of wierd tribes that flood its airports every year----the victory at some kind of National Bee...

OUR ticket to nerdly Nirvana is the National Spelling Bee. For ages the humble brown skinned wierdo has been the taxi driver or the overworked motel owner in the American mythology. He was chracterised by the strange "britishness" of his English groaning under the weight of many regional accents. He worked himself to bones and often would scare people in some hospital playing the doctor on Halloween.But No More -will he have to stand the slights of rednecks in school playgrounds, take the bullets in his convenience store holdups.The New Age saviour of the Indian is the here.....He/She is tiny....... is awkwardly gawky...........is as tall as the trophy he/she holds.....wears glasses.......AND KNOWS THE DICTIONARY INSIDE AND OUT. The Mastering of the English Lexicon by the Indian will be next only to the triumphs of Deepak Chopra in Indian-American folklore. Year after year, children have slogged in the mines , memorising words on the sly in the playground, reciting menmonic formulae to the gods, watching jealously while older kids walked away with spelling bee trophies.....and then the liberation comes.........That entry into the hallowed halls of nerddom....That cathartic realisation of the American Dream and a star is born. He/She knows that appoggiattura is not a fatal illness of the brain, isn't afraid of telling the bullies that there is no such word as dickhead in the dictionary and has been photographed for the high school newspaper with the proud Principal in the background.
Many Indian parents have waited all their lifetimes with baited breath expecting their little bundle of joy to liberate them from the dour existence of suburban America and catapult them to their fifteen minutes of fame. There is a vicarious joy in watching Indian mothers turning into the winged greek goddess of victory, much to the jealous fulminations of all the other indian mothers around. She has been the one person who waked her kids up at unearthly hours to memorise word lists. She has made ancient potions (on her grandmother's authority) to sharpen the memory of her to-be superstar. She has lied to the teacher that her child cannot take after school dance classes because her child has paediatric osteoporosis. Now the day comes when it has all come to fruition. She can hold her head high in the comity of suburban mothers. She can bake cookies for her kids that she'd promised them after the competition. She is now the mother of an All-American Hero.
Off course, All-American icons aren't easy to classify. In the demonology of the American Mind there are immigrants of three types:-
A) those that run across the border, steal jobs, speak wierd languages and vote for the democrats
B)those that work hard in family businesses, study hard at universities and are planning to take over America in the future
C)and finally the Terrorists.
Thanks to our skin colour(not color for me), we've been in all the categories of the list. The silver lining has always been that we knew, all our great brahminical traditions of memorising effortlessly, without comprehension, would someday pay off. And when it has paid off- we have managed to own the different kinds of Bees that Americans are so enamored of. The mindless prattling of information saturated kids for some reason touches deep chords of envy and admiration everywhere. That has proved to be One Strand of Hope that will lead us to the promised land of an All-American Life. LONG LIVE THE DICTIONARY!!! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!!!!