Itsy Bitsy Spider

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again

Alain Robert, the French Spiderman, the ‘human spider’ climbed up 100 meters high, 20-storeyed building in Pune, and left different people feeling differently about his extra-ordinary ‘ascent’ atop the most fundamental of all human fears, ie the fear of height.

I watched him weave a pattern with his bare hands and feet while crawling little by little like a spider on the vertical challenge before him. My fears started troubling me as I watched him move higher and higher. What if he misses a step? ... his grip loosens? ...his head gets hazy? I knew he had the experience as well as the expertise, but still, he is human…prone to errors.

I scolded myself for attracting negative emotions to the whole spectacle, and sat watching him go up and up like a Yogi in trance. Suddenly, he stopped, standing precariously on the edge of the window-sill at the 12th storey, waving to the spectators, whipping up the frenzy of the cheering crowd. The cameramen inside the building, following his every step through the window panes, started clicking away poses of the man hanging in the middle of nowhere. My stomach churned at the thought of the Yogis of the highest order like Durvasa and Vishvamitra, falling prey to distractions; and here was this modern Yogi, in the jungle of distractions. What if his meditation gets disturbed?

I found my eyes welling up with tears of relief as our Hero arrived safely back to the ordinary humanity, in awe of the laws of Nature, especially the law of Gravity.