How Indian kids conquered the English dictionary and became world champions of spelling bees
- The 1983 Scripps National Spelling Bee had six Indian competitors. This year, they made up nearly a third of all entrants and seven out of eight winners were South Asian
If only Priya Damodharan had given the antihistamine medication loratadine to her 13-year-old son Rohan Raja when he needed it, he may have progressed further in the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition.
“I kept this medicine out of Rohan and this medicine kept him out of the national bee,” lamented Damodharan, an Indian-American engineer who lives in Dallas, Texas with her family.
Raja was asked to spell “loratadine” but could not because he had never heard the word before.
The annual spelling contest is an American institution that has challenged the best young brains in the country for almost 100 years.
Raja finished 10th.
“He kept telling me: ‘You should have at least shown that medicine bottle to me, I would have remembered the spelling’,” Damodharan said.