How do you spell STEREOTYPE?

Two of the three top winners of the Spelling Bee are Indian-American. Again. Kavya Shivashankar took first place. Anamika Viramani came second.

Did second place winner Tim Ruiter really crack under pressure or was it the combined yogic energy of a billion-plus Indians at work?

What the heck is it with Indian Americans?

Here’s the memo to my fellow Indian Americans – All the spelling bees have been won. Let’s try something else now.

I guess its not just Indians. When a Korean woman won the LPGA it set off a golfing craze in South Korea. Last year there were so many Korean women (45!) in the LPGA, it came up with an obviously racist rule about how you needed to be fluent in English in order to play golf! That thankfully was rescinded but I am worried now someone will try and come up with something similar for Spelling Bees.

If your name has more than 3 syllables you can’t compete in the Bee. You will have an unfair advantage. No, Mr. Shivshankar, I know your daughter has been practicing for years just to win the Spelling Bee but rules are rules.

That’s kind of scary. After she spelled Laodicean to become Queen Bee, Kavya Shivashankar said it was her dream and she hopes she could coach her little sister next.

Noooo. Stop. Please make this madness stop.

But why do Indian-Americans do so well at Spelling Bees? I confess I loved words. I used to get up early in the morning before everyone awoke and sit on the windowsill in the early morning light with a tattered old Oxford English dictionary, just reading it. But I wasn’t doing it to learn spellings. I just liked words.

Maybe we have good memories because we come from a culture where we had to learn reams and reams of dates and dynasties just to pass a history exam. The Tughlaqs, the Khiljis, the Aibaks, the Mughals, the Hoysalas, the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Pallavas, not to mention the three battles of Panipat.

Maybe it’s just good old fashioned family values. Kavya’s coach was her father. It’s a cool way to while away long car drives when you are driving across state lines to the tri-state Gujarati association Navaratri potluck dinner.

Perhaps just having to spell our names over and over again in America, hearing that slight shocked pause from the telemarketer when your name pops up on the screen (unless they are a call center in Chennai), spelling has become second nature to our community.

Why do Indian Americans want their kids to win the spelling bee so badly? I mean there are no spelling bees in India, certainly no national competitions – of course, India has over 20 languages. Maybe that’s the clue. My native Bengali has two n’s, 2 r’s (one r, one rrrr), three s’s. Once you’ve learned the hard way which ‘s’ is used when and the rules governing the n’s, Laodicean seems like child’s play.

But it’s not just Spelling Bee. On May 20 two Indian American teens, Arjun Kandaswamy and Shantan Kroviddi took two of the top three positions in the National Geography Bee.

Well, I thought, its kinda cutely nerdy to have your ambition be “I wanna be spelling bee champion.” It’s not necessarily the mark of an over-achiever.

Then I read more about this year’s winners. Kavya’s hobbies include swimming, cycling and traditional Indian dance. She plans on becoming a neurosurgeon. Anamika’s hobbies include violin, Indian classical music, dance, and golf. She hopes to attend Harvard Medical School, where she hopes to specialize in cardiovascular surgery.