The story so far: Nala takes Hanuman to meet Sampati. Hanuman is curious to know the story behind Sampati’s lost wings.
Sampati leads them into a grand hall with a huge sculpture of Sampati’s father, Aruna, driving the Sun God’s chariot. The statue is engraved with the names of each horse – Gayathri, Brihati, Ushnih, Jagati, Trishtuba, Anushtubha, Pankti – and each is painted in different colours of VIBGYOR.
Sampati: Let me call my brother Jayatu.
Sampati runs to the terrace and turns the light towards a prism. The light splits into seven colours and forms a huge beautiful rainbow that is visible from several hundred kilometres away. Soon they hear a heavy movement of air…
Sampati: There he comes. Jatayu.
(Illustration: Sahil Upalekar)
Hanuman is amazed by Jatayu’s wingspan.
Hanuman: Wow! Did Sampati also have such huge wings?
Nala: Yes. They are the world’s strongest and biggest birds. They can fly at heights that other birds can’t.
Hanuman: What height is that?
Nala: Over 37,000 feet.
Hanuman: Woah! Where the temperature is around -30 degrees?! (Ref. Episode 7: Nala explaining the temperature-altitude relation)
Nala: Yes. On Earth, only the Ruppell’s Griffon Vulture has been spotted flying at that height.
Jatayu enters the hall majestically. He hugs Sampati.
Sampati: Jatayu, meet the great Hanuman — the one who stunned the solar system.
Jatayu: Welcome, Hanuman. We have heard a lot about your perseverance and bravery from our father. (Ref. Episode 5)
Hanuman: Thank you. But I am yet to hear the story about the great love and sacrifice that led to your brother losing his wings.
Sampati (to Jatayu): Shall we tell him the story narrated by the people or the actual science?
Jatayu: Let’s start with people’s version…
Sampati: Okay. When we were young, we used to play near the banks of the Godavari river. We used to race to see who could fly the farthest.
Jatayu: Sampati, being stronger, could fly much higher than me, while I would keep trying and failing. Sometimes, just to make me feel better, he would lose.
Sampati: One day, he started to fly higher and higher; he didn’t give up. I was happy to see his hard work bearing fruit. But he got carried away…
Jatayu: Usually I save some energy to help me fly back down. But that day, I was determined to give everything I had to see how high I could fly.
Sampati: Usually, we fly 6-9 km upwards.
Hanuman: That’s the Troposphere.
Sampati: Correct. That day, Jatayu reached the edge of Troposphere and almost entered Swargaloka…
Hanuman: That’s the edge of Mount Meru at 12 km!
Jatayu: Looks like Hanuman already knows all the scientific terms, brother. We might as well tell him the science version of the story….
Sampati: I tried to warn Jatayu but, before my voice could reach him, he was flying past 12 km.
Nala: He must have been flying faster than the speed of sound — more than 330 m/s (Mach 1 or super sonic speed)!
Jatayu: Yes. Soon I started to feel faint…
Hanuman: Really? How come I did not faint when I flew past that height?
Nala: That is because you are the son of the Wind God. Your father’s Vayu sena — the air molecules — made sure you had enough oxygen to breathe. That was not the case for Jatayu.
Jatayu: That’s right. As soon I reached the ozone layer, I started to breathe O3 instead of O2 — the breathable oxygen.
Sampati: But there was another danger, which we did not anticipate…
Jatayu: Soon I started to fall back down towards Earth at a very high speed. And I began to feel the heat…
(Image: NASA)
Sampati: Realising that his body was about to burst into flames, I flew up to him and covered him with my wings. And we fell down together.
Jatayu: That is when my brother’s wings caught fire. People on Earth started saying that I flew close to the Sun and that Sampati’s wings caught fire when he tried to protect me. But we didn’t go near the sun at all!
Sampati: We can only fly till the Stratosphere because of the air density, but we cannot fly past the Ozone layer because it is dangerous for creatures like us.
Hanuman: Why? And how did your wings catch fire?
Sampati: For that we will need to tell you the science part of the story…
Nala: Yes, Hanuman. It involves scientific principles which is important to know for anyone who is interested in flying.
To be continued…
The author is the founder and CEO of Vaayusastra Aerospace, an IIT-Madras incubated ed-tech start-up that offers Air Science workshops for children between five and 14 years.
Word Search
Find the names of the seven horses that steer the Sun God’s chariot in this grid below:
