The Silver Grains

THE SILVER GRAINS

Do any of you have any guesses what it is in the picture?

I was just walking by, upwards, when I had to stop for my mother who had stopped for my father while he was trying to click a picture through the big camera. So there I was, standing on a corner of the small path, waiting for them, looking around and trying to absorb the beauty of the place when my eyes fell on a little crack on the wall in front of me.

What I saw, I thought was some silver powder that might  have been left from last Holi (Yes I actually thought that). I walked a little closer to it and peered inside the crack. It turned out to be a very well spun spider web covered with water droplets.

Do you wonder how much time it took for the spider to create this web in such a way that it would be suitable to nurse her children. Now she has finished spinning the web which seems perfect to her. She goes away to mate and maybe dies in the way ( my only explanation of the lonely web still being there :if she was done using the web she would have eaten it up to recycle it ).

So the web is left as it is, perfect in the eyes of it's creator and the months pass by and spring changes to summer, summer changes to winter. Winter comes, it snows covering the whole web in snow, yet the web does not break. Winter changes to spring, the snow melts leaving a few droplets, spring changes to summer  and the water evaporates. Every few days it rains and the water evaporate by the evening. One day it had just rained in the morning, a stranger came and saw the web in the crack. she took out a very bright device and did something.

~ Anjora Khatri
(Hamta Pass Hiking- Manali. 6-6-2015)