aloque

The city that love built

"You are never to see her again", stormed his father. "I never expected that you, a king to be, would cavort with a commoner, a dancing girl even. Have you no respect for your position or mine?".

The words bounced off him easily. They weren't so hard to ignore when everything he held sacred told him that he was right in seeing her, her sensuous form swaying as the sun shrank away almost as in envy of her radiance. He was right in slipping away for their clandestine meets, to feel the sweet agony of waiting for her on the banks of the river, oblivious to the water that joyfully played at his feet. He was right, he said to himself, to fill his mind with thoughts of her, to want to be with her every one of her waking hours, to sleep by her side every hour he spent asleep. She opened to him a different, more beautiful life than he had dreamed possible, just by her presence. With her, he found courage, strength, tenderness, and a will to succeed he did not know he had. She made him a better man than he had ever thought possible. She was no commoner. She was the princess of his heart.

Storms raged outside the fort walls every night that season, and he hadn't seen her for days. His anguish was incomparable to anything he had known. He asked himself if he could live without her, and he knew what he must do. He walked out, called for his horse to be saddled, and rode off into the rain. The raindrops stung his face like a swarm of angry bees, but he held on to the reins and urged his horse towards the only home he knew. He reached the banks of the swollen river which was devouring everything in its new found path, and without care, coerced his faithful beast into the hungry waters. They had no chance against the unforgiving force of nature. the horse was swept away from beneath him with a fearful whinnying, and he was tossed around like a small twig. He flailed his limbs in the direction he wanted to go and the current carried him to the other side. He ran, ignoring his bruised and battered body, knocked on her door and collapsed in her arms. She, wordless, held him close and they reunited in tears of mixed emotion.

When the prince did not return home for days, the king sent for him, and realizing the value his son had for his own life relative to his love, he relented, and had a bridge of stone built over the river that almost claimed his life. The prince married the love of his life and, later, built a city where she had lived.

The fort is Golkonda, the river, Musi and the largest monument of love in the world is our city of Hyderabad.