The boys who chased the sun - by bakula

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The boys who chased the sun<br>A reflection on Icarus, Hanuman and wonder.

bakula<br>Apr 16, 2026

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Two ancient boys once rose towards the sun.<br>One flew with stitched wings, wax trembling under borrowed feathers. He rose because he wanted to touch the sun’s heart, to see whether he could reach what glowed above him. The sun burned him. He fell. The sea closed over his name.<br>The other did not build wings at all. He leapt. As a child, he saw the rising sun and mistook it for fruit. It was hunger that propelled him skyward. He, too, was struck down. He fell. But he did not die. His jaw swelled. The world remembers it as a story of divine mischief.<br>Two boys, two stories of sheer bravery and two falls.<br>And god knows how many eras and epics later, we are here. Icarus is seen as a reckless boy who ignored his father’s orders. Hanuman, even though a God, is seen as a mischievous, yet innocent child.<br>Icarus became a warning. He became the symbol of ‘reckless bravery’ throughout the literature. While Hanuman got immortality. God forgave and blessed him.

Was he a fool? Or a happy wonderous kid?<br>But ignoring this theology and compass of morality aside, I find both being very similar in feelings. The feeling that made them what they are.<br>Wonder.<br>Wonder which was fueled by two different reasons. Icarus’s wonder started with the urge to touch the sun, to see it. And Hanuman’s wonder starts with the hunger of it.<br>Even today, we say the sky is not the limit and so on. Is it the limit? We don’t know. Metaphorically, we are all trying to reach our own sky.<br>And that is because of the wonder we had in us. We are trying to follow the footsteps of Icarus and Hanuman, knowingly or unknowingly.<br>We build wings out of science. We leap toward new suns of dreams, power, and knowledge. Sometimes we fall and call it failure. Sometimes we become ‘Icarus’ Sometimes we survive and call it destiny, and we see Hanuman in us.

Wonder which fuels it all.<br>In our failures, we whisper the name of Icarus. In our triumphs, we remember Hanuman.<br>But would Icarus truly be a warning if he had never risen? Would Hanuman be divine if he had never leapt?<br>Maybe the fall was never the greater part of the story that made it memorable.<br>It was the ascent. It was the wonder of Icarus and the hunger of Hanuman.<br>Perhaps what makes us and these ancient boys similar is the same feeling.<br>Will we reach it? We don’t know.

“Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight, For the greatest tragedy of them all, Is never to feel the burning light.”<br>- Oscar Wilde

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