En route to Lumbini from Bhairahawa recently, a tiny spider fell out of the blue in the van I was travelling in, moved precariously at the end of its flimsy silken thread and landed safely on my arm.

It was something that pulled my attention. Here is a little fellow traveller, I thought, and let the gatecrasher work uninhibited on its itinerary.

I didn’t panic for its demeanour did not suggest that it belonged to the poisonous type; its silky nest was too fragile to trap me, and of course, I stayed unscathed under its weight. It was as if Mother Earth found the human weight cumbersome.

How on earth would that be possible! The glaring difference was that the spider would most certainly do no harm to me or for that matter the Mother Earth, while the men are going to the extent of defacing the only habitat they have.

Well, my arm became a cozy playground for the minuscule arachnid. It moved in all directions, while its little claws got stuck in my woolen sweater every now and then.

Its progress towards my palm was seriously impeded by the wool, much in the same way our progress towards a certain destination is impeded by the potholed roads, conked-out vehicles and the like.

Curiously, the tiny insect chose to frolic around pretty long. Releasing silvery silks almost magically, it even flew a la Spiderman a couple of times. And inerestingly, every time it climbed back to its favourite playing field of my arm. Its repeated to-and-fro maneuvers hardly irked me.

On the contrary, the whole event made me realise one thing: we are, in fact, never alone. We just cannot be! Frankly speaking, loneliness is a misnomer.

Travel and a spider may be with you; walk and a leech might be feeding

on you; sit at the dining table and the flies come swarming as if the food was prepared primarily for them; sleep and lice may be having a feast with you; yawn and a midge may even wish to make its home inside you, in the warm and peaceful dark!

Feeling lonely? Get upbeat now! More than twelve million species of living beings inhabit the planet to give us company — all in a different way, of course.