"It all happened on that dreadful night. I belonged to one of the noble families during the time of the zamindars in late twentieth century. My late grandfather was a merchant in the British era and this Luthra bungalow was erected by him."

Karan ultimately began with his narration, his grip on my shoulders firm and his other free hand playing with my fingers. His enigmatic touch was so full of flavour, bringing out the reality of life from inside me, the life where there was the need of a true companion to submit one's pains to the other.

"So this was the reason why I felt your house to be built in the ancient era." I shook my head.

He continued, taking the discussion ahead. "Yes it was. My grandfather had two sons, my father Mahesh being the eldest and my uncle Dushyant the youngest. My father was a prodigal spoilt brat and my uncle was diligent and hardworking. My father used to spent his time gambling whereas my uncle quickly learnt the family's traditional business."

"You mean your uncle was more responsible kind of a son than your father?"

"He was and when my grandfather died, he had put the entire business to my uncle's name, aggravating my father for the worst. They brawled and my uncle was humble enough to put a portion of the property in my father's name. I was a child of hardly seven years old then and my uncle's wife used to make me work errands for the family. My father used to drink and gamble daily, and I used to suffer in the hands of my aunt for his deeds."

"This was so horrible, Karan. A little boy working errands! What about your mother? And does this mean that the Luthra bungalow belongs to your uncle?" My enchanting box of questions unwrapped all of a sudden.

"You need to listen to the entire thing to get the answers to all your questions, Preeta."

"I'm just getting curious, Karan. So don't your uncle have any children?" I was trying to get to Sameer's topic as quickly as possible.

"He has a son named Sameer, who is six years younger to me. My aunt put me to work errands because my cousin was an infant and she couldn't look after the household chores. Sometimes when I felt tired of working, I used to hide behind the pillared platform in the living room and listened to the discussions of my uncle with his colleagues. I was picking up the art of our family business easily unless..." His voice trailed off, sounding like the painful notes of a little child who had faced enough suffering in life.

"Isn't this the same place where I had hidden while keeping an eye on you and your friends?" I exclaimed when I heard it.

He simply nodded in affirmation before continuing, "I turned thirteen and Sameer seven, and he used to play with me whenever his mother wasn't around. Being the responsible elder brother and a skilled cook, I used to prepare relishing cuisines for him. Everything fell apart one unfortunate evening when I had gone to the market to buy groceries..."

Karan drew in an uneasy breath and and I could feel his fingers dig against the skin of my shoulder. I stayed quiet in my position, giving him the time to compose himself until he wanted to continue. "When I returned, I found my uncle with a knife which was dripping blood and my father was lying on the ground with his body insanely stabbed. I used to already dislike my uncle because he supported his wife and abused me many a times. I couldn't keep my calm seeing my father's dead body and immediately smacked my uncle's head with a vase..."

He paused, most probably waiting for my reaction. "Why will your uncle stab your father? Had they fought again for property issues?"

Karan's hand left my shoulder and he shifted to lean against the wall next to us. His eyes were welled up in tears and I knew how difficult it was to remember such a horrible past. I gently brushed my palm across his wrist to pacify the pace of his haunting memories and he stiffened, slumping his shoulders.

"My uncle hadn't killed my father, Preeta. When my father was lying dead in a pool of blood, the police arrived soon after and seized the vase from my hand. It was wrong for me to judge the truth by only seeing the scene before me. My uncle was in fact trying to save someone else and the police narrated the entire truth to me."

"What did the police say?"

"It was Sir.. I mean your Mr. Karthik who was in charge of the case. He was an inspector then and had fetched his task force to our bungalow. He told me that my aunt had stabbed my father because of his attempt to indignity her. When my uncle returned home, he saw my father's dead body and snatched the knife from her hands to take the entire blame on him. My brother was very young and he needed his mother beside him."

I was trying to chalk out every point in the story before enquiring again. "How did the police come to know what had exactly happened?"

"It was my aunt who had informed police the entire thing over phone and they had arrived to investigate. But... before they could examine anything, my aunt had committed suicide by hanging down the ceiling and my six year old cousin was crying in front of her lifeless body. My heart clinched at his shrill cry and guilt began  to overtake me..."

"You were not guilty, Karan. You were only thirteen and you jumped into the scene with what you saw." I tried to calm him but he was shuddering inwardly, his fingers trembling unless I encircled my arm around his waist.

"I was guilty, Preeta." He refused sternly, a seriousness in his low pitched voice. "I had hurt my uncle physically, the one whose entire family was destroyed by my father's unforgivable crime. It was my father who was at fault and I wanted to surrender to the police. But Sir played a major role for saving my career, future and my life."

"What did he do?"

"I was a minor then and he was sensible enough to understand my situation. He nullified the vase incident because my uncle had regained his senses. The wound on his head wasn't deep because a thirteen years old boy didn't have that strength to badly hurt an adult."

"Mr. Karthik is a gem and now I know why you respect him so much," I said, breathing with a relaxing sigh after knowing that he wasn't arrested or held guilty for anything.

"I still clearly remember Sir's words to me that day. He had advised me not to take decisions in a haste because it is bound to ruin us. I can never forget his contributions in my life... I owe him a lot."

I squared my shoulders, pondering deeply over the matter. "So Mr. Karthik knows about you having an uncle and a cousin."

"He knows it but he doesn't know what happened after the police had left the house. My uncle's state of mind began to deteriorate and he turned mentally ill. He used to hit me with a hunter and abuse me for attacking him that day. One fine day, a notice was sent to the bungalow to vacate it because a very rich gambler had bought it in an auction. My father had earlier put it on stake during gambling and had slyly signed the consent papers from my uncle."

"Your father was more of a villain, Karan!" I didn't know what more to say because the dialogue seemed apt.

"My uncle's health deteriorated more than ever and we were thrown out of the house by the new owner. I travelled by a truck with my little cousin and my severely sick uncle, luckily reaching the rehabilitation centre somehow. They declared that my uncle had gone into coma and I admitted him there.."

A lone tear trickled down his eyes, dropping one or two of the spherical heads on to my forehead. His chin was resting against the crown of my head and his fingers threading my hair as a gesture to calm himself.

"Oh no! What happened to you and your brother after that? You had nowhere to go." I wanted him to narrate the whole of it.

Karan agreed. "We took to the living in the streets and I ran errands for both of us. I started working at a road side restaurant and admitted Sameer to a local school. Things became worse for me when I started receiving fits of psychosis because of all the horrible incidents in my life. I used to travel to the rehabilitation centre every week to receive my treatment and collect information of my uncle's health."

"That must have been so tough for you." I pressed my palm against his hand, caressing the skin of his forearm.

"People came to play cards and gamble at the hotel where I used to work. They normally took to bet for huge lump sum and I used to watch them from afar. I was intelligent enough to learn the art of gambling by only observing them and helped the teams in the game sometimes. After all, I was the son of a gambler. " Karan slowed down and I shook my head.

"You were only an adolescent then and you learnt what you saw daily." I tried controlling the pain he was experiencing since childhood.

"They used to give me tips for helping them and I was contended with it. One fine day, a wealthy man came over and spoke to me, pleading me to gamble for him in a casino. He even offered me huge monetary advances and I accepted it."

"You accepted his offer of gambling!" I was surprised with his decision.

"I did because I wanted to impart a better future to Sameer. I didn't want him to suffer the way I had struggled in my life. The earning at the hotel wasn't much and Sameer was also suffering with me. I later sent Sameer to Bangalore for higher studies but I never disclosed the source of money to him."

"So is he still at Bangalore? It has been so many years since then."

"Fifteen long years, Preeta!" He confirmed me. "I don't even know where my brother is now."

"Oh no! Did you lose track of him?"

"He willingly went away when he came to know about my gambling business. He disliked it instantly and vowed never to see me again. For the past few years, he has been visiting the city only to meet his father at the centre and the doctors of the rehabilitation keeps informing me. I used to send huge donations to his college at Bangalore and clear his fees personally, while Sameer thought he was receiving a scholarship."

"You are such a great brother, Karan. You are someone who sacrificed his own happiness for his cousin." I confessed the truth, in fact his selflessness had managed to win my heart.

"I grew rich when the man for whom I gambled at the casinos died and he left behind a vast amount of fortunes for me. I bought a few casinos with that money and undertook my real motives of regaining the ownership of our Luthra bungalow. Everything happened as planned and the gambler who had bought our bungalow visited my casino. I challenged him the same and he finally lost to me."

"So this is how you became the owner of this gigantic bungalow. You found the fruits of your efforts, Karan. You returned to your own house..."

"No Preeta, no..." Karan jerked his head a little before clutching my shoulders, rotating me to face him. "This is only a house made of bricks and cement where no family resides, where no individual finds love and where nobody shares the emotions of life together."

He was breathing hard, wanting to cry his heart out. He was shivering for the immense pain embedded in his heart and not for the dense cold outside. I pulled the blinds to the window before fetching him behind me to reach our bed. I wanted to deviate the topic to calm him somehow. "How did you go on to become an undercover agent under the same Mr. Karthik?"

"It was a funny incident. He had visited one of my casinos to nab a criminal and coincidentally, I had informed him of the whereabouts of the criminal. He recognised me at once from the past incident and spoke to me personally. I informed him that I was ruining these gamblers who were evil like my father and distributing their money among the poor. He got impressed and enrolled me as his secret agent."

My heart was bleeding for Karan. He was the real sufferer in the entire story, giving up his own happiness for the welfare of his family, regaining his ancestral bungalow and finally agreeing to work as a secret undercover agent.

"Mr. Karthik is indeed a friendly man with the golden heart of a child. Doesn't he have a family of his own?" I was now curious for the man who was the reason behind my acquaintance with Karan.

He clumsily nodded his head. "He had a wife but she left him a few years ago to get married to some other man. She complained that Sir was a crazy man and didn't give enough time to her, not even considering having children with her."

I was shocked to hear that Mr. Karthik was living his life without a wife and yet he managed to always lead his life in the happiest way possible. He always showed to us that he was a carefree man but deeper inside, he was unhappy too. He had preserved hidden pains within, not wanting others to know his painful truth.

"What about your education, Karan? I've read somewhere that you have completed your education in some anti-criminal degree?" I asked and I saw him arching his light pink lips into a  little smile.

"I had received my elementary education under the efforts of the person for whom I used to gamble. I later completed my graduation in criminology from distance education due to Karthik Sir's efforts."

I cupped Karan's cheeks in the next moment and spoke in a voice only audible to him, "I've heard your hurtful past and in all these, I don't find any reason to hate you. So why were you telling me in the beginning that we would hate you if we came to know your truth?"

He studied my passionate eyes full of trust for him before parting my hands off him gently. He averted his gaze before mumbling, "A truth is still left to be disclosed, Preeta, something which can either make or break us... I don't want to hide it from you but then I'm afraid that you would hate me after knowing it."

Which truth could be more horrible than the ones he had narrated to me so far? Beads of perspiration began to preoccupy my forehead and I was racing against time to fortify the walls of my weak heart. I had to hold myself strong to face the last hurting truth, a truth which could compel me to hate him. Could it really be so terrible or was it only his own assumption?

_________

To be continued...

A/n:- What could be his last horrible truth?