When Strangers Meet (50000 ebooks sold): 3 in 1 Box Set
K. Hari Kumar
WHEN
STRANGERS
MEET
Kristoff Harry
K Hari Kumar
When Strangers Meet
Sometimes All It takes is a Stranger’s Tale to Change the Track of Your Life
Paperack first published by Srishti Publishers
Ebook published by Red Olyfaunt eBooks
www.redolyfaunt.com
Copyright © K Hari Kumar, 2016 All Rights Reserved
Official Pages
www.facebook.com/KathaHariK
www.twitter.com/TerrenozHari
www.instagram.com/agameofgods
Email: [email protected]
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18049367-when-strangers-meet
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18049367-when-strangers-meet
Other Books by the Same Author(s)
THAT FREQUENT VISITOR
A GAME OF GODS
INDIAN CUSTOMERS : CLICK HERE to READ
GLOBAL CUSTOMERS : CLICK HERE to READ
Official Facebook Page : www.facebook.com/KathaHariK
Dedication
To my father...
Contents
Disclaimer
Other Books by the Same Author(s)
Dedication
A Message
Praise for Author’s previous works:
Book 1
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Book 2
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Thirty Five
Book 3
Thirty Six
Thirty Seven
Thirty Eight
Thirty Nine
Forty
Forty One
Forty Two
Forty Three
Forty Four
Forty Five
Forty Six
Forty Seven
Forty Eight
Forty Nine
Fifty
Fifty One
Fifty Two
Fifty Three
Fifty Four
Fifty Five
Fifty six
Epilogue
THE GURGAON EXPRESS
REVIEW Did You Like the book? Do you have suggestions? Write to me on [email protected]... Don’t Forget to Leave Your Review on Amazon & Goodreads
A Game Of Gods – Sample Chapters
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
Also Read:
A Message
Dearest Reader,
The reader’s love and support mean a lot to a writer… It’s like oxygen for us, and I am no different. Thank you for reading my book. It means a lot to me.
Being my first book, When Strangers Meet will always be special for me. Thanks to my parents, my publisher at Srishti and millions of readers who have enjoyed the Story of Iyer, Jay and Pathan.
I hope you will love this book, and leave your wonderful reviews on goodreads and amazon, as read my new books THAT FREQUENT VISITOR and A GAME OF GODS, both available on Kindle Unlimited for Free.
Lots of Love
K. HARI KUMAR
Praise for Author’s previous works:
‘Speaks the story of the common man’
-The hindu
‘An extrasensory tale’
-The New Indian Express
‘Storyteller at Heart’
-Deccan Chronicle
‘Scraps of reality/Bits of humor...Wonderful reading!.’
-Dii, Tom Tender
‘Great read, lots of unexpected twists’
-Susan Wegloski, Chicago Reviewer
‘There was suspense, sadness, fright, love, magic, and mystery... all the things I love in a good book’
-tizzy-licious.com
‘A gripping story that gets better and better with each page!’
-NJ Kinny, Reviewer
Book 1
The Runaway
Prologue
May 21 2011
Somewhere in Southern India
03:15 AM
Everyone in the coupe was fast asleep, some men were dreaming lustily about the bodily amusing middle-aged woman from the next coupe while others were simply asleep. All lights were down inside the compartment, the only source of illumination was the passing track lights outside. The bulky man sitting on the side berth rose from his throne and slowly walked towards the washbasin located at the rear end of the compartment. He pressed the lid of the tap upwards. A stream of water poured down onto his hands and rest of them hit the metallic sink. With his right hand, he gathered few ounces of water and splashed it on his dried up face. He repeated this four times more until he felt his drowsiness fade away into the night’s darkness. He released the lid and the water flow stopped. He moved towards the door, pulled down the latch with his embarking right hand. His muscles almost tilted the axis of the latch. The door unlocked and he pulled it backwards as he rested his bottom on the door that had opened behind him. He looked outside, it was dark, the moon was hard to find among the school of dark clouds, but there was some whiteness at one spot that he recognized as an effort by the lunar marvel to peep in through the clouds that had gulped it.
As he dwelled upon the happenings of the past, both long unforgotten ones and the more forgettable recent ones, he produced a cigarette from his pocket and placed the filtered end in his mouth. He screwed the lighter and there was a spark, which went off in a second, another try, and this time the lighter produced a bright flame that did not extinguish. He brought his face closer to the flame, there was the earthy smell of tobacco catching the first flames and soon the cigarette was ready for consumption. He turned off the lighter and placed it back in his pocket.
‘What if his words came true?’ He thought as he puffed in a few vapors of tobacco, ‘Oh God! Please find a way out, I do not want him to die! O Lord of Tirumalai, help me!’ He prayed.
He exhaled a weave of smoke into the atmosphere. He looked at the K engraved on the wrist of his right hand.
A tear fell from his eye.
As the Sampark Kranti Express passed over river Krishna, his heart passed through a bridge that separated hope from fear. Dawn was still awaiting its final call before the night could shed out every inch of its eerie darkness.
There was some hope in the darkness, the hope of a bright dawn waiting on the other side.
Moreover, all he needed was some more hope.
One
May 20 2011
City Center Mall, MG Road, Gurgaon
09:15 PM
<
br /> The stout young boy wrangled his Signature jeans over his waist as he walked in the direction of the girl. She was vexed out of the posh discotheque. The girl wearing prickly white top and slick denims pushed her way out. The boy overtook and stopped her by stepping in front her, blocking her way. He saw his handsome face in her light brown eyes. The soft patch of skin covering her cheeks was as smooth as peach and as fair as milk.
The girl turned her face away from the boy, he insisted upon getting her attention back unto him. He sprouted harshly, ‘Hey! Hey! You! What do you think you are? Huh? Some kind of a teenage drama queen???’
‘Get away!’ the peach-skinned girl waded away at the boy’s face.
‘Oh! Do not give me that do paisevala attitude of yours! You had your time with me and you should be proud of that, no one else’s gonna treat you that way!’
‘Just let me go!’ She insisted.
‘Who’s stopping you? Go! I will find more like you.’
‘Oh then what are you waiting for?’
‘Waiting for you to,’ he came closer to and punched, ‘Fuck off!’
The eyes of the girl got dewy, he stepped aside and she stranded herself out of the mall, crying aloud.
‘Fuck You! Tania Malhotra, I am gonna be huge! I do not need your advice! Try finding for yourself someone henpecked who would listen to your eenie-weenie girl-talks! I am not that guy!’ He bashed back into the crowded mall.
Another teenager woofed behind the boy, ‘What are you trying to prove, Jai?’
Jai did not turn around, he spoke while he still looked at Tania fading into the crowd huffing outside the mall, ‘Who cares about her? When I become a superstar, such girls would be willing to die just in order to get my autograph. Let her piss off!’
‘Hey listen to me, man. Call her back, she’s a nice girl, you will repent later!’
‘Oh! Fuck you Anwar! If you are so concerned, why don’t you go and make up with her? I got better things to do than repent over stale food.’ Jai boasted angrily. Clearly, his ego had surfaced out of bounds.
Anwar’s face displayed a patch of concern for his friend who had been outgrowing himself with frustration over the past few days. He placed his left hand on Jay’s right shoulder and pitched in with a softer voice, ‘Look, she just asked you to be careful about what you are gonna do. Sometimes you make stupid decisions and then end messing up everything. She wasn’t wrong at all!’
Jai brushed off Anwar’s hand from his shoulder. He started walking towards the exit and in a moment, he was outside the lavish City Center mall. As he stood facing the overtly swift MG Road, he pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a Zippo lighter. Slowly he started puffing smoke in and out. Slowly, He disappeared into the commotion that was the crowd moving around him.
Two
May 21 2011
Prakash Bhawan, Gurgaon
10:15 AM
Atmosphere inside the Sharma household was burning on fire as usual. Prakash Sharma, the mathematics professor from Delhi University picked up whatever that was lying in front of him and threw it at the wiggling teenager standing at the corner of the dining room. Luckily for the young chap it was just an onion, unlike yesterday when he was hit by a storming night-torch!
He dodged the onion but before he could do it again, something else hit him on the forehead and it exploded. The pulp poured down his nose and streamed into his mouth. He yelled ‘Dad! For the sake of your dumb God photos, stop throwing onions and rotten tomatoes at me!’
‘Damn it son! How dare you enter my house at this time? Where were you last night?’ The angry father squirreled at his son.
‘I…I was at Anwar’s! We…were checking a few maths problems,’ He knew the word maths could save a bundle of trouble, for his father could not be bribed with anything but the token of numbers & equations! Some anti-math students back in the university would joke about the Professor’s marriage with the beautiful Mrs. Sharma. They would crackle that he married her just because she had the right co-ordinates at the right place!
‘Oh! Now you think I am going to believe you. After all these years of studying maths at Anwar’s you bring a D in maths and physics in your board exams! Are you even ashamed of yourself? Aren’t you ashamed of lying to your father all the time?’
‘But I got an A+ in English…’
‘Shut up! I do not give a damn about it. Besides English is not even a subject. English is just a bloody language of people who ruled us like slaves for two centuries! But Mathematics is a universal truth! A real subject, a test of mental strength! It is the base of everything!’
‘Then why do you teach maths in English?’
‘Jai Prakash Sharma, you think you are smart, little guy? You are not getting any allowance until you score a 70% in your first semester Mathematics’ Mr. Sharma declared.
Jai was shocked to hear the news, ‘Whoa? Sem…sem…semester? I thought we were supposed to bite maths till twelfth only!’
‘You got maths for 4 semesters in engineering colleges’
‘Engineering? I mean, you are sick, dad! First you promise me that I have to deal with maths only till my 10th. After tenth, you tell me that it’s just till 12th and now you say 2 more years!!! I mean 4 years, damn you, I am not getting into an engineering college, and I do not even have qualifying marks!’
‘This is my house, I am the one earning here, and so, I call the shots here. You, my son, do as I say. Did you get me?’ He pointed his fingers at his son.
Jay’s face turned red with anger ‘I hate you dad! You are the biggest liar I have ever seen in my life! Why don’t you just kill me? I mean… It’s better than studying engineering!’
‘Shut up! And go to your room, get ready! We are going to Jagannath College of Engineering and you are coming with us!’
‘But Dad, I wanna do animation! Learn acting side by side!’
‘No more arguments. Get dressed in 5!’ He ordered.
‘I dun wanna do engineering’ Jai protested.
‘Get dressed!’
Jai had no other option but go to his room and get dressed as ordered by his short-tempered father. He opened his closet and put on the worst pair of jeans he had, the one that was torn from the bottom, and a shaggy white jumper over his naked chest. He pushed his hair apart, made a mess of his long spunky locks and without looking into the mirror ran downstairs. His mother was locking the kitchen entrance, she did not turn around to look at his son’s new look. She commanded softly ‘Dad’s waiting in the car, run along before his anger shatters the windshield.’
He walked slowly towards the steel colored Maruti Alto waiting outside his house. His mother locked the front door and followed Jai to the Alto. Both of them entered the vehicle together through the two rear doors, Jai from the left and Mrs. Sharma from the right one.
‘You must be wearing that damn deodorant! What’s that called?’ Mr. Sharma thought for a moment, ran his retentive head for the brand that most of the Indian boys were addicted to, ‘AXE! Yes, it’s good that you are sitting in the backseat with your mother. I can’t bear that killer smell! ’
‘Shut up! Dad, I do not use AXE, ok?’ Jai argued.
‘You new generation kids only know the ways to defy your parents. Argue with your father, do what they ask you not to do and that is your dharma!’ Mr. Sharma’s voice shifted its pitch from mildly angry to I am going to throw you out of the car mode. ‘You people only want to dress up like film stars, flirt around with girls, do make-ups and stuff! Back in our time, we would help our parents with all the domestic duties and still find time to study and excel in academics.’
Mrs. Sharma knew this was going to be another long filthy ride, she made an effort to end it before it would ripen, ‘Prakash, stop it! Let him do what he wants to. He is much better than other kids his age.’
‘You!’ Mr. Sharma pointed at his wife, ‘are the reason for all this! He is spoilt and useless, just because of you.’
‘Hey Dad! Can you do us
a little favor?’ Jai insisted.
‘What do you want now?’
‘Just shut up and drive us to the hellhole you are taking me to.’
An emotion of red tanned anger ran over Mr. Prakash Sharma’s pale face as he pushed the accelerator hard enough to set the road on fire.
‘Hey! Slow down, you are gonna get us all killed! Are you crazy?’ Jai shouted at his enraged father who was driving the car like a tainted emu.
What a life, what a father! Jai thought as he tried to keep his cool.
Three
May 21 2011
Ghittorni
11:15 am
On a very timidly lit noon, illuminated enough to distinguish darkness from light, the little boy turned his head first to his left and then to the other side. Then he checked straight, as if in a single stride he would measure the entire length that he was meaning to cross to get on the other side of the road. His destination was a dusty container office across the road that took care of the construction site booming in that part of the village. His father had told him ‘Arshad, when you grow this place will make you rich and we will open a bigger tea stall outside the mall so that more people can drink our tea’
‘What is a mall, Abbu?’ he had asked innocently.
‘It is a big shop that has everything in the world. You will like it’ His father had told him.
‘Why can’t we open a shop inside the mall?’
‘We will do that too, we will do that. But you must serve very good tea to those good people who are building it. It is your job to make them happy.’
‘Yes, Abbu!’
Now after a year of serving tea, he was familiar with almost everyone at the office. He believed his father was closer to their dream as well.
