Christmas Eve in India

gymnasticating across Ahmadabad rooftops,

five long-tailed langur holy warriors

dressed in gray

orchestrate a deliriously intoxicated street wedding procession

below, parading greenwhite Christmas cars

and Amitabh Bachchan mud flapping rickshaws line the streets,

while gushing rainbows of multicolor roses and

streaming orangeyellowwhite callalilies

explode flamboyantly, serenaded by a

cacophony of tubas and dhols with

bamboo wooden sticks beating,

and greenscarlet saried women

dance in effervescent Hindu-Horah Sufi circles,

oblivious to the tubby paan chewing street peddlers

flailing week old squash and green squishy oranges

here, all across this vast mad subcontinent

so ecstatically undaunted,

Mother India again pauses tonight, converges,

then unanimously exhales

signifying another rebirth,

as our grateful planet heartens: “shabash! shabash!”