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, all serenaded by a cacophony of tubas and dhols

with shiny black 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

it is here, all across this vast mad subcontinent so ecstatically undaunted,

that Mother India again pauses tonight, converges,

then unanimously exhales signifying another rebirth,

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