I am not a neat person. The sight of neatly stacked books and objets d’art arranged according to height and colour unnerves me. If Beckam loses his mind when soda bottles are not arranged in a straight line and his jockeys are not folded in the exact same manner, then my obsessive- compulsiveness lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. I am compelled to mess things up! Even my writing is untidy; the letters falling all over each other. A glance into my college notes would give people an insight into a seemingly cluttered and chaotic mind.

So, peeping into my room and getting a glimpse of cobwebs spun high up on the ceiling and in the corners is a high possibility. Well, more a surety. Don’t get me wrong; my room is not a landfill and the atmosphere is not as toxic as some of my friends make it out to be. After all, I am bound by societal rules (and those of my folks) that state clearly that all living spaces be kept habitable at all times. So I attempt to clean up my room, grudgingly, every time I’m given an ultimatum to either do so or vacate the place.

What people find hard to understand is why I leave the cobwebs untouched even when I have every possible surface shining brighter than rappers’ bling-blings and all my belongings stacked so neatly I could puke. The thing is, I don’t have the heart to wipe away those carefully built homes in so many lopsided lines and turn away those fragile-looking spindly-legged little friends of mine. Whenever I am forced to wipe out these ‘blemishes’, the daddy-long-legs would walk quietly out of their homes and allow me to obliterate all traces of their hard-work. Subdued, but not defeated, they would patiently begin spinning their webs again the moment I am done wrecking their homes.

Spiders are some of the most beautiful little-creatures that ever tip-toed on this earth. I could sit for hours watching them scurrying around on their delicate little feet, more graceful than any ballet dancer, spinning webs so fast as though vying with deceitful humans. They climb up and down my walls on sticky feet, hang upside-down over my bed with their hairy bellies showing, stare at me with multiple eyes and perform circus tricks for my pleasure. On their evenings out to woo me, they are content in the knowledge that a juicy fly would be struggling in their gossamer web and they wouldn’t have to bother hunting for dinner.

Well, now you know my deep, dark secret. I love spiders. I never lose an opportunity to tell people that feng-shui preaches these stilt-walkers to be bearers of bonhomie and that killing a spider would bring you bad luck in your sex life for three years and seventy-nine days. And it’s true, too, ask any feng-shui expert (ahem..) My only wish is that I be given my very own forest where I can rear all the known (and unknown) species of spiders. Perhaps even my very own acromantula! Tobey McGuire, eat your heart out; this girl’s heart is caught in the web of a real spider!