Remember those grandma tales?  Tales, that amused and tickled our imagination as they explained why things were the way they were. Every kid wants to know why the sky is blue and grass is green; why could mountains not have wings and fly and how the rain falls from skies. Grandma had answers to all those tricky questions. Here is one such tale from A.K. Ramanujan’s basket of folktales. This curious story explains why the sky and sun are so high up in the sky.

Once upon a time sky and earth were in close embrace. As a result there was hardly any space for creatures on earth to move around or even breathe. Even the sun was so close to earth that its heat was unbearable. People died of either suffocation or excessive heat.