That weary, stressed out look on parents’ faces say it all.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: One of the best creative sporting T-shirts I’ve seen in a long time was the one worn by the father of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee co-champion Vanya Shivashankar.
Mirle Shivashankar is an IT professional with Booz Allen Hamilton, a Senior Consultant at Convergence Acceleration Solutions/CAS Group. He, and his wife, Sandhya Shivashankar, a software engineer, have the proud and unique distinction of being the only parents in the history of the Bee to have produced two winners from the same family – Vanya’s older sister, Kavya Shivashankar, won the Scripps championship seven years ago.
That act was almost emulated by the Buddiga family more than a decade ago. Pratyush Buddiga of Colorado won the Scripps Bee championship in 2002, and two years later, his brother Akshay Buddiga almost did an encore, but finally placed second.
Mirle, who is the Indian American equivalent of Richard Williams, the father and coach of the champion tennis sisters, Serena Williams and Venus Williams, sported a yellow colored T-shirt this year at the spelling contest in National Harbor, Maryland, that read emblazoned in black ‘The Beefather’.
Mirle has said in the past that he coached Kavya with a unique algorithm he created that pulled out words from the dictionary. He declared pronunciation as the biggest challenge when it comes to mastery of words. This year, he looked much more relaxed though, with Vanya participating on stage.
After all, Mirle’s job was done finally after a decade long tussle to conquer more than 100,000 words from the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, with his two daughters.
Kavya had won, and Vanya, the $100,000 ‘Child Genius’ winner, was in her fifth and final attempt at the Bee. There would be no longer going back home to strategize on how and when to start anew to dig deeper to get roots of those unpronounceable Latin, Greek and French words; have yet another go at the national championship.
While Mirle and Sandhya’s job is done, as is co-winner Gokul Venkatachalam’s parents, Krishna Venkatachalam and Sreepriya Vaidynathan, for millions of other aspiring and existing spellmeisters and their parents, it’s continuous work to be honed for years on at a stretch, till the contestant finally maxes out eligibility rules, unless of course, he or she goes on to win the grand prize at the nationals.
Coming back to that T-shirt of Mirle, it should be patented. Seriously.
Variants of it should be given to all aspiring and participating Bee parents, at the state and nationals. Notice I say parents. Not participants. For aspiring Bee parents who have wards under rigorous training, it should read: “The would-Beefather’. For participating parents: ‘The hopeful- Beefather’. For those who did it for years without their kid finding that ultimate prize: ‘The Bee-and-done-that father’. And to those poor souls who pulled out hair while watching their child flounder, lose track of a word that was coached multiple times but pronounced differently, and correctly, on stage: ‘The Bee-sting me please father.’
Ever wondered how the contesting kids look so cool and relaxed on stage, even have time for somersaults, bantering and jibes with the judges and streaks of humor at the difficulty of words presented to them? The answer is to be found on the faces of their parents sitting a few yards away. The parents look like they just did a half marathon with no sips of water, harangued and stressed, ready to collapse and be taken out on a stretcher, with hoarse breathing emanating at times that sounds eerily from sci-fi movies that feature creatures in a dark cave.
The reality is the Scripps spelling bee contest is as much of a competition for parents as it’s for children, if not more so. Win or lose that 9-year-old contestant as he walks off stage is thinking of getting back to his room to catch up with his friends on the Pokemon league.
Not so the parents, who quickly bring out their pocket calendars to tick off the days they need to take off for the rest of the year till the next finals, to again sacrifice weekends and parties and other meaningless social activities, to pore over the old beaten dictionary, scour the websites for new words that come out every year, including colloquial words; mollycoddle the latest dictionaries in the market; compete at midnight with other hagglers for that elusive new but used dictionary on Amazon.com, a new version of which is not anymore at Barnes & Noble, a discovery made after driving 100 miles to the nearest store.
Maybe a new T-shirt too might come in handy for these parents: ‘Busy as a Bee.’
Recently, my wife and I got a taste of life as a bee parent.
When a friend of my wife told her about an upcoming North South Foundation junior spelling bee and math bee regional contest in Connecticut, my wife immediately enrolled our 7-year-old son, who is in second grade. My wife informed me that all the kids who have gone on to win the North South Foundation bee contest emulated that feat at the Scripps national bee championship. She was enthused. I was impressed, felt purposeful.
The ‘bribery’ began soon after that: bribing my son to study for the contests that is.
He quickly figured out that he had the upper hand here, and his demands grew in the two weeks he practiced. From 30 minutes daily of playing that highly infuriating game (for parents) plants and zombies on the i-Pad, it quickly became an hour (does it have more zombies than The Walking Dead, I don’t know). TV time was separate, he declared, with resolute eyes. He smirked, seemed to brood when we tried to complain, haggle. He demanded the TV cable card back, which I had whisked away. He won, every time, each of his demands.
When he tried to spell words – incorrectly – looking askance at a book also he was trying to read, I felt like throwing that book to the neighbor’s dog, and quit the mindboggling effort to coach him altogether. My wife warned me to keep my temper in check, with some harsh words from her side thrown at me for effect. She told him to go do some math instead. As he bounded off, I was left alone to pore at the daily quota of words he still had to finish. I learnt a lot of new words myself.
Our younger son, 5, jumped in too at these crucial see-saw battles. He took full advantage of the situation, pouting and showing fake anger when he was not given his share of those plants and zombies games. His idol worship of his brother is limited to games and TV shows he is guided to.
Anyway, at the contest, my wife and I shared a few jokes privately at the stressed out look of some of the parents. We stopped those jokes abruptly when an acquaintance met us, and asked casually if we were under the weather that day. After the initial math bee was over, we had lunch at a local Indian restaurant. The younger one yelled for the non-existent pizza in his usual please-me-or-I’m going-to-give hell attitude. The older one, the contestant, slept off. We didn’t know whether to eat, or to wake him up.
“He won’t have energy for the spelling bee,” my wife commented, in a voice which meant “it’s your chore” to take care of.
I had skipped breakfast, in order to make the registration time of 7:30 a.m., so just nodded and scarfed down some naan and chicken, to get down to the challenging task. We finally managed to get our ‘Bee’ up, had him take some plain rice, to prepare for the big challenge.
Later, we too got into the frenzied mode as other parents who had got together at the venue, University of Connecticut, Stamford, as the hour approached for the contest. I sat down with my son for a last minute ‘going through’ some of the words he had missed earlier. He looked bored, ready to sleep some more.
After the written rounds, the parents were allowed to watch the oral rounds. It’s tough to watch kids compete, feels bad when a child doesn’t get the word, is disappointed. The atmosphere was tense. Since the winner was to be declared from the combination of the oral and written rounds, we had to wait further.
We had expected our son to do well at the math bee, as he enjoys the subject. He came second there, his first ever prize; his joy was enough reward. My wife and I felt relieved. We would not go back home empty handed, rejuvenated despite the long, tiring day. Felt we were ‘special’ amongst those who sat there in the auditorium.
It came down to the results of the junior spelling bee results, confined to 2nd and 3rdgraders. As the 3rd and 2nd prize winners were announced, I could hear my wife sigh softly.
“That’s gone,” she said softly, as she clapped, convinced our son didn’t make it after all. We had hoped against hope.
Then the first prize was announced. It was our son’s name. He leapt from his seat to go forward and claim his trophy. My wife and I exclaimed, in pure surprise. I high-fived with my son when he came back, delight writ large on his face.
The real implication of his wins hit us as we drove back home. We had a smile on our faces, but a kind of a weary know-all (depressing) feeling too: it was going to be a long road ahead for us, with the two weeks of bygone practice now going to stretch to perhaps many years.
The champ was happy though, questioning us time and again as to when he would get that laptop promised to him. Again, my indiscretion; a ‘bribe’ said in almost jocular fashion, to cajole him to crack a hard unpronounceable word. The lil one could barely stay still in his seat, expecting that i-Pad to be his sole entity, now that his brother was graduating to a laptop.
My wife and I threw bleary-eyed glances at each other as these incessant demands came from the back of the car: God knows how much more we would have to ‘bribe’ them, to study more words for future contests.
All I can say is that Mirle should sport a ‘The Champion Beefather’ T-shirt and Sandhya should sport a ‘The Champion Beemother’ T-shirt. They deserve it.
Hats off to you both Mirle and Sandhya Shivashankar! And a big congratulations to you both! At all your patience, resilience and hard work you have put in all those countless number of hours to train your little girls to become national champions and fine young ladies with a great future.
To other parents: keep up the good work, without losing your hair.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)