| Colliding Hearts |

| Chapter One: 'Blaze Of Truth' |

Jishnu inhaled deeply as he stepped into his native city after fifteen long years, his brown orbs scanning the surroundings as he walked through the roads in a mixture of familiarity and alienness. He had spent his entire childhood in Vadodara but the past fifteen years that he had been away, changed a lot more than he could conceive. He couldn't recognize the places the way he was supposed to, and it was a remainder of what he had lost.

He had lost his father but the line was not as uncomplicated as it seemed like. When he lost his father, he lost his childhood, his home, his hometown, and everything that had made up his world for those ten years of his life. Everything... everything including...

His mobile vibrated in his palm, pulling his attention towards itself and he couldn't help but smile sardonically at the irony. The screen of the mobile flashed the word Maa, the significance of whom he had grown to forget.

It wasn't his fault though.

She was the one who had abandoned his side when he probably needed her the most. The world thought he had lost only one parent but he had lost both...

"Jishnu, have you reached?" Her voice greeted him from the other side as soon as he picked up the call. "Why are you taking so long? Come quickly!"

"You took fifteen years to call me back home, Maa!" The bitterness in his son's tone silenced his mother. "I have to check upon something here. Have your breakfast and don't wait for me!"

He cut the call and shoved the mobile into the pocket of his pants with a huff. It hurt him to remember the fact that though she was his mother, she hadn't been anything but a guest in his life. No matter how much they both tried to repair their relationship, he knew that they would never be the same again, for nothing could undo the trauma he had experienced when his father left him and his mother sent him away.

Of course, he had his uncle's family, or so everyone including his mother thought, but his uncle and his aunt could never give the kind of care that his parents could have given him.

They hadn't shown any bias.

They had brought him up and given him the same opportunities that their own son was given. But they couldn't help him emotionally because they never even tried to. It was a financial relationship, and nothing more than that, and his mother forced him to go through such a phase despite his relentless pleadings against it.

He had heard, the same day his father had died, that his father's friend Vishal Gupta was the one behind his death. When he asked his mother about it, she denied such a prospect. But it was the only way he could justify his mother's harshness, to believe that the rumors about his father's demise had some truth to them. Vishal was the reason behind the damage that hit Jishnu, and whether it was directly or indirectly was a question he needed to solve.

Jishnu looked up at the large, looming building of the office of the newspaper company that his father's so-called friend owned. A huge board with the title 'Blaze Of Truth' in blood red letters against a white background hung from the gates. The logo beside the name, a painting of the burning fire, drew a painful sigh from him. He couldn't stop his mind from flashing a couple of moments of the bygone past when his father had shown him the logo for the first time, followed by his father's funeral pyre that still haunted him.

The company was as much his father Shveth Vyas's company as it was Vishal Gupta's company until the latter had removed his father from his position as the Editor-In-Chief after accusing him of double-dealing. Shveth had invested in the company financially but the grief at facing such an accusation from Vishal made him leave the company without a second word. After that incident, Shveth didn't live long.

"Who are you?" The security guard tapped on Jishnu's shoulder, bringing him out of his reverie. "If you want to go into the office, you should have an appointment for that!"

"I have an appointment to meet the proprietor of BOT!" Jishnu opened his mobile to show the confirmation email that he had received, and also showed the guard his identity proof, watching the old man mumble his surname with a strange nervousness.

"You are allowed to go..." The guard finally stated but Jishnu could sense the awkwardness in his tone. Did everyone know about the past and about his father? What did they think of him? That he was an immoral man?

With the pressure of these questions and an involuntary ire building up inside him, Jishnu walked into the infamous office of Blaze Of Truth.

_______

Jishnu settled down on a couch in the waiting hall as the receptionist had requested him to wait for sometime. When his eyes suddenly fell on the photo frame hanging on the wall, the slight relief he had felt when the receptionist did not react the way the guard did, perhaps as she was newly employed, faded away completely.

It was a big photo frame, taking up a lot of space on the wall, and the photo was a family photo. More like the photo of two families, of Gupta and Vyas.

A wave of shock ran through him as he stared at the photo frame with his jaw dropped and his pupils dilated. In the photo, Vishal and Shveth were sitting together, their wives standing beside each other behind them, and Jishnu and Vishal's daughter, who were eight and four-year olds respectively, were sitting on their father's laps.

What was that picture doing on the walls of the BOT office?

"Excuse me, Mr. Vyas!" The receptionist called out. "Please go to the proprietor's chamber which is the last one on the right side in this particular line!"

Jishnu nodded, wiping his forehead as he followed the instructions for the route of the chamber. As he reached his destination, the name board of the proprietor greeted him on the glass doors of the latter's chamber.

Vishal Gupta. The Proprietor.

Jishnu could feel his blood boiling as he glanced at the name. Manipulation. Nothing but pure manipulation. To escape the allegations and blame, Vishal put up that picture in the hall.

Shutting his eyes to contain his anger, Jishnu almost pushed the doors open and searched for the man who had made his life hell. Vishal might have assumed that everything had ended along with his Shveth's life but it didn't!

"Oh, come in!" A soft, feminine voice was heard, startling him. He followed the direction of the sound and found that a woman was seated on the chair of the proprietor, dressed in churidar, her wavy hair covering half of her face as her chair was tilted to the side.

"Ji... Jish.. Jishnu... Jishnu Vyas?"

She snapped her head in his direction, turning her moving chair in a quick motion, her eyes widening with shock, her lips parting open as the file in her hand slipped and fell down. "Jishnu?"

He blinked and averted his gaze, his memory recognizing the person but he was unwilling to admit it. Perplexity took control of the air in the chamber.

____

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