Spelling competitions have experienced an odd renaissance in recent years. Despite the fact that spell-check software has nearly eliminated the desire to learn to spell, Americans have flocked to two spelling bee movies and a Broadway musical. We're a people who love our white-knuckle competitions, whether they involve grown men racing cars in a circle or children laboriously taking a stab at the word filiopietistic.

The spelling bee movies and musical are, to some degree, a celebration of the underdog, the misfit, the overachiever. So it's not surprising that Kunal's struggle has caught the attention of the national media. His story has the bonus angle of being about immigration at a time when the country is struggling to decide who and how many and when.

The New York Times recently described Kunal as an "angry speller." Kunal doesn't disagree, but tempers the description with these words: sadness, ill-tempered, dejection and irascibility.

And then one more word: gloomy. "I'm a gloomy speller," he says.

Promotional material for Broadway's "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" isn't gloomy at all; in fact it's downright cheerful as it sums up its moral: "Winning isn't everything and losing doesn't necessarily make you a loser." No, Kunal says, actually, in his case, this year, winning is everything. If he gets all those letters in the right order enough times, he figures, he will get his parents back.

Kunal already has a mustache and stubble on his jaw, so when you're looking at him it's hard to think of him as a child. But it's important to remember, says Steven Lawrence, the Sahs' immigration lawyer, that Kunal still reasons like a 13-year-old. He calls his parents every night and carries their picture in his wallet.

He could have moved back to India with them but chose to stay in America, hoping one day to go to Harvard.

His parents, Ken and Sarita Sah, came to the United States in 1990 on Ken's student visa, then applied for asylum in 1992, arguing that after a Muslim attack on a Hindu temple in the region where he had grown up, it would be difficult for him, as a former Hindu activist, to return to India. It took eight years for the request for asylum to be turned down. Five more for the appeals. Lawrence has one more idea that might get Ken back into the United States — an application for an "investor's visa." If that fails, he and Sarita will have to wait 10 years to reapply for admission. By then Kunal will be 23.

Lawrence makes a point to call his clients' return to India last summer a "voluntary removal" rather than "deportation." These are important, if subtle, immigration distinctions, but are also just words. The fact remains that the Sahs are living in New Delhi, and Kunal, their only child, is living in a motel in Green River.