Along Came a Spider

Inspired from Neil Gaiman’s novel “Anansi Boys”

In the era of animals, before the homo sapiens had come to exist; there existed a spider. This spider was large and black, and used to make the most geometrically accurate webs. Legend has it that the webs he spun could even capture mammoths and dinosaurs. But, nobody knew when the spider spun his webs. Nobody saw the spider in person. All they did see was the effect; viz. the webs he spun.

The animals realised they could do nothing about the spider and so they began to tell stories of the spider around their dens and their lakes and trees. The legend of the spider grew, almost like a web. 

Time passed. Nobody saw the spider, yet the webs showed up.

Then came the era of man. The discovery of fire. The wheel’s construction. The webs that the spider had spun seemed to have vanished. The men did not fear the spider. They were not even aware of its existence because they did not understand the language of the birds and the beasts. To them, the animals were food. It was not necessary to talk to them. Had they listened, perhaps they would also be able to appreciate the legend of the spider.

The humans evolved. They started to compile histories. In those histories, webs were mentioned. Fossils of animals that had been trapped in the webs surfaced. A group of humans calling themselves archaeologists and chemists studied these webs. The webs were strong, spun like gossamer and able to withstand pressure.

And, just like that our spider was back. People wrote poems about spiders. They wrote about a young group of boys going into a forest and meeting spiders. People also introduced giant spiders, who cocooned their enemies and hung them up as bait. Stories of mutations from spider bites surfaced.

In the coming era, the archaeologists and chemists were called programmers. They connected and interconnected large devices called computers. They created something called the World Wide Web.

And so, at night when the children want to hear a story, often their parents look it up on this World Wide Web.

At the centre of this web, sits a large spider

The Bilge Master