Marvellous, Marvellous

Long before Guru took up tennis seriously, when I was playing tennis at a group outing during Celebrations, Guru came over to watch. Then he walked right up to me and said he wanted to play with me. It was so sacred to me, words can't express it. Of course, after a while my mind started approaching the situation. It said, "Guru isn't a tennis player, so I think the spiritual thing to do would be to play on his level." So we plopped the ball up and down, back and forth, as an audience surrounded the court. Then it hit me, "Don't play easy for Guru. If you win, it will be his success, and if he wins, it will be your victory anyway." This made things easier. When he played, Guru made the funniest sounds, like when you fill your mouth with air and pout it out. When he missed a shot, he would say, "Oi!" or something to that effect. A few times I lobbed the ball over Guru's head so that he had to run and get it. But soon he caught on to my weaknesses and would poke the ball just over the net so that I would have to run like mad from the baseline. Whenever we switched sides, Guru would say quietly, "Marvellous, marvellous." And I did feel just that.

Renuka (Concord, Massachusetts)