Shishir Hathwar a Bangalore-based Hatwar, an electronics engineer in BHEL, clinched the world record this week for the "fastest backwards spelling of 50 words" in one minute 22.53 seconds, beating the record of Job Pottas from Kerala who clocked one minute 40.14 seconds in March 2010. The earlier record was held by Deborah Prebble from UK (two min 21 seconds). Shishir won by a comfortable margin of over 17 seconds when he spelt 50 randomly chosen words, including 20 six letter word, 15-seven letter words and 15-eight letter words.The time included that taken by a person to read out the words and spell it backward. "I took just 1.6 seconds per word including the time taken to read out the word", said Shishir, who was asked to spell out words chosen from a variety of fields, including literature, arts and science.Shishir can also read and write Kannada, Hindi and Sanskrit and speak Tulu. It was a You Tube clip of Pottas breaking the record that got him started on the idea he could attempt a similar feat. Shishir says he also reads books by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Bertrand Russell.
ShiShir is from BEL not from BHEL
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