The little boy burst into the room as eager as any four-year-old wanting to tell on a gang of children who'd soaked him with water. His face was flushed with excitement, almost to the colour of his maroon robe, his eyes flashing with mischief as he threw himself prostrate across the bed. 'Marmie, I'm wet, I'm wet.' Another child followed quietly, a robed youth in tow, who, at the mother's request, swiftly removed the boy's wet robe, replacing it with wine-coloured jogging pants and a yellow sou'wester. The child was not going to be left to romp around in wet clothes.
Indeed, this child will never be allowed to get caught in the rain or dirty in a game of mud pies. Not, as you might suppose, because this is a delicate child but for reasons altogether more ethereal.
This boy is a golden child, the stuff of Eddie Murphy movies, a boy chosen from the millions of others born to embody the reincarnated 'mind' of a revered Tibetan lama, or teacher, Dezhung Rinpoche III, who died in Seattle, Washington, in 1987, at the age of 81.
Buddhists believe we are all reincarnated but that enlightened lamas can choose which body to return in. What makes this energetic child running around the grounds of a Kathmandu monastery unique is that he is the first American boy to be acknowledged in Buddhist circles as a reincarnated lama.
Sonam Wangdu was born in the same city, Seattle, to a devout buddhist but all-American mother, Carolyn Lama, and a Tibetan father, Tenzin Chopel Lama, who died in a car crash in 1993.
Mrs Lama, so-called for no other reason than that her husband, like many Tibetans, was named Lama, knew even before her son was born that he would be special. One night she dreamed of rising in the air to the top of a sacred stupa (a religious monument) in the Kathmandu area and of being able to see a line of shining stupas stretching to infinity.
But it was shortly after the boy, now known as Trulku-la (pronounced Tu-ka-la and meaning one who has chosen to take rebirth) or Dezhung Rinpoche IV, was born that two of the highest lamas who had known Dezhung Rinpoche III recognised his reincarnation.