A visit to the 200-year-old Residency building in Koti, one of the most iconic buildings in the city, looks like it has been bombed out from the inside.
A portion of the roof of the left wing of darbar block has caved in. And as workers cleared the fallen masonry and moved massive teak rafters, which held the mezzanine floor, what one could see was not a ceiling but a tin sheet that kept the sunlight and rain out. While conservation officials claimed that the 8-metre teak rafter was brought down, workers on the spot said it had crashed earlier.
“This is the western part of the darbar hall and it has suffered the most amount of damage over a period of time due to negligence and lack of maintenance,” says A.R. Sharatchandra, a conservation architect, who is working on the project.
“The ceiling of this portion of the building is of pressed metal, which was imported from England, while the darbar hall’s vaulted ceiling is covered with coloured paper mache. We have stacked the metal sheets in the dungeon,” said Mr. Sharatchandra, as he took us down memory lane about this iconic colonial-era building.
Its massive lions at the entrance, Palladian columns and a flight of steps have been featured in countless Hindi and Telugu movies. The Residency is an inalienable part of the Hyderabad’s mixed heritage, where the mellow romance between the British resident James Kirkpatrick and his Indian begum Khairunnissa played out.
Built in 1806 by British engineer Samuel Russels, the building was a nerve centre of colonial intrigue in the heart of the Nizam’s kingdom. After Bilkiz Alladin’s ‘For the Love of a Begum’ and William Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’ were published, $1 million was pledged by American Express Bank towards funding the conservation effort. “Last year, another anonymous donor gave $1 million to World Monuments’ Fund (WMF) to help preserve the Residency,” said Daniella of WMF, which is channelising the fund for the conservation of the building.
“We want to start with a whimper and end with a bang. Our first aim is to protect the building. We are maintaining and cleaning it, and have put up a monsoon shelter,” said B.T. Seetha, principal of Koti Women’s College. “The conservation work is going on and it cannot be done in a jiffy. It will take time. The damage to the building has been extensive due to years of neglect. Quite a lot of effort will be required to restore the building,” said city historian and INTACH co-convener Anuradha Reddy, who, incidentally, walked the corridors of the building during her college days from 1964 to 1968. Though Rs. 17.5 crore has been allotted for the conservation work, over a staggered timeline, the latest development is going to hurt the schedule.
