Fifty-eight years of waiting. One midnight of arrival. This is the record of the day Telangana became India's 29th state, and the long road that led to it.
The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill is introduced. A Seemandhra MP releases pepper spray in the chamber to stop the proceedings. The bill survives the chaos, as the demand had survived everything else for fifty-eight years.
The lower house of Parliament passes the bill. Constitutional sanction, at last, for a state first recommended by the States Reorganisation Commission in 1955.
Both houses have now spoken. Celebrations erupt across Telangana's districts. At 23 Tughlaq Road in Delhi, KCR steps out to the crowd with two thumbs raised.
President Pranab Mukherjee gives assent to the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act. The formation of Telangana is the law of the land. The appointed day is set: 2 June 2014.
In Telangana's first election, TRS wins 63 of 119 Assembly seats and 11 of 17 Lok Sabha seats. The party founded in 2001 with a single demand receives the mandate to lead the state it fought for.
The man who founded a party in 2001 with one non-negotiable demand, who sold his own land to fund it, who took it through by-elections, betrayals, and an eleven-day hunger strike, takes the oath of office in the state that demand created.
Sworn in alongside him: T. Rajaiah, Mohammed Mahmood Ali, K. T. Rama Rao, T. Harish Rao, Nayini Narasimha Reddy, P. Mahender Reddy, Eatela Rajender, T. Padma Rao, G. Jagadish Reddy, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and Jogu Ramanna.
What Telangana did with its first decade (the water, the welfare, the farms, the city) fills three chapters of this library.