Please bear this review under this movie Topic till I can move across to appropriate section.: Thanks.;-)
Games and competition have always inspired people. When
I was asked by one of my american colleagues to join a Ball game, my reluctance was vividly visible. So much as to clarify on his part that Americans like games which are fast and tiring like Nascar, Basketball or many other adventurous sports. Then the discussion started to waver to games originating from different countries. One game that has been common in liking was soccer. Almost all the countries have a common view of Soccer, one of the most fast and immediately tiring games, even while watch
Akeelah and the Bee
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ing.;-)
Today I was sitting in front of the TV in my hotel room watching the live telecast of another interesting game. This time, its a different game not involving agility in your legs but more on your brain. Yes, I was watching the live telecast of the 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee competition being telecast live for the first time on abc channel. This was being telecast just like any other game with commentary on the background, ad breaks, excitement etc etc. This reminded me to remind that colleague of mine to this equally exciting game and also a long pending but casual ramblings on MS.;-)
Basically, the competition is to test contestants ability to spell a word correctly based on the pronunciation and some hints like what does the word mean, what is origin language of the word, etc/. The competition started with 275 contestants who were reduced to 13 by the end of last day of competition spread across 25 rounds. The last 13 contestants survived spelling correctly all through the previous rounds. In each round, one word is given to be spelled in about 90 seconds with some bonus time. Whoever misspells, thats it, he/she is out of competition. All the contestants had to be between 8 and 13 years and between 4th and 8th graders.
I have found this program to be as inspiring a program watched in recent times than the RDBs or anything else. I still remember reading the review by jodhiyas on Akeelah and The Bee and longing to watch the movie. I am sure this program made me more wanting to watch the movie.
The sort of composure, calmness, interest level, maturity while requesting for additional info over and over again and several times encouraging fellow contestants these kids have shown, is simply amazing. And I think this game/competition is no less than any other Quiz competition or games or idol music contests or anything else. It has a special attraction especially involving the resolve of kids of such young age. More so as the game is little tricky at times with the spelling of the word changing based on origin of language it is derived from. Almost three words were from Indy origin namely Izzat, Makara and Kundalini. One of them, Kundalini helped in the winner in her final rounds.
This competition has been lately dominated by Indian Americans with names like Anurag kashyap, Sai Gunturi, etc etc a commonly appearing names on websites and magazines across India. This time around, there were 4 Indian Americans in the last 13. Even the youngest contestant in the final rounds was an Indian girl. The other three were Michael Christie, Rajiv ToriGopula and Nidharshan Anandsivam. Anandsivam stood 7th, Michael stood 5th and Rajiv 4th before leaving the first three spots to girls after a gap of 8 years since 1999. And all the three were more than deserving to be there.
All the contestants were equally pitted against each other. Among all the other contestants, two contestants stood out as different and as graceful and seemed to be thorough professionals of the game. First was the ever confident Rajiv Torigopula, a 13 year old 8th grader born to Indian Americans physicians from St Loius, Missouri. Rajiv was so confident that he would just spell the word and go back to occupy his place. He seemed to have crammed almost all the difficult words that can be found anywhere. Each word he got seemed to be so ambiguous and never heard of but each time he came out spelling it correctly with that air of confidence only few individuals can get, forget about whether its child/ no child.
Second was the cute and ever smiling girl from Canada, Finola. She was only contestant from outside of America to be in the finals. She was as confident as Rajiv but as mild and composed as she could be smiling all along till she misspelled another German origin word. Both of my favourites fell to words of German origin ;-(.
The winner ultimately was Katherine Close from New Jersey who didn’t seem to be confident all the time but proved to be the perfect winner who could get through a mix up of complex and not so complex words. Sometimes, in between complex words, there are chances of you getting trapped with easier ones. But she proved her mettle. And so Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander.
But anyhow, this time around, there was lot of enthusiasm among the audience as well as the organizers as it was the first time that this competition was being telecast live on globals channels like abc and ESPN.
As Rajiv put it, its not just about cramming the words and their spelling, its much beyond that like learning the origin of the word, various other cultures, reading a lot and also at the same time respecting competitors for their hardwork and commitment.
So guys, if you get a chance next time, do watch this program and I can assure you this will be as exciting as any other competition.
@Sarvesh.
May be it interested me more as me and my brother used to be competing when my father used to ask us to correctly spell simple English words like definition and not defination or grammar and not grammer.
Have Fun;-)