Badmiton with Ms. Leah Prajna Rose on a Sunday Afternoon

tis better, methinks, to play badminton w/ ms. leah as she & i did yesterday before it rained. she's a brilliant whacker. swinging wildly at any birdie that moves toward her, occasionally blasting the little bird over my head into the rivulet. well, at other times, flaying madly, like her parents, trying to hit the damn thing and, instead, falling down on the moist grass laughing outrageously to herself w/ a little girl's whimsy.

it's a little hard to take the game seriously when you're trying to smack a little white, feathery cone over a lowered net on bamboo posts in your backyard at a six year old girl, who happens to be your daughter. i mean, seriously!

then, she gets up again & blasts her racket at this minor orb while it falls passively at her feet. missed. ok, take this! and, she swings her smooth, thin arm high sweet chariot over her head, the birdie seconds from landing on her curls, when she miraculously whacks the birdie again sending her father in his boxers & a t-shirt (moi...) chasing the damn flying plastic projectile toward the sharp thorns of the bougainillea shrubs.

ok, sweetheart, my love, my undefiled, now it's business. as i take aim and fire the little cock back to her side of the net where she swings her oversize black racket and full of pluck, self-confidence & joie d'vivre twangs the bouncing birdie back across the astonished net to me.

we almost go to four consecutive hits, which could have been a record -- if anyone were keeping track. but, instead, she starts to giggle, bundled up again in that infectious, irreverent, absolutely divine little girl's laughter and falls to the ground in rich, uninhibited, fullsome child's joy & child's play.

then the sky joins in the humor by opening its clouds to the flash of early monsoon lightening, the crack of thunder over shivapuri ridge behind us and the huge, himalayan drops of rain thudding down around us...

we run into the house to safety, home-made watermelon juice & gita's freshly baked cookies.

i ask you: is there a better way to spend the best part of a sunday afternoon in kathmandu?