Heritage society · lime, not cement · Hyderabad
Hyderabad's deodis and old-city houses come down quietly — a carved doorway this year, a wooden balcony the next. Deodi Dost is a society of surveyors, students and craftsmen who document what stands, with owners' consent, and mend small things properly: lime plaster where cement would kill the wall, a carpenter who still knows a teak bracket. We work only on private houses whose owners invite us; the protected monuments have their own guardians and we are not them.
Every document and repair happens under a written owner's consent, and every drawing is the owner's copy first, the archive's second. Nothing here touches ASI or state-protected monuments — that is the law's work, not a society's.
For People who love the old city's lanes and want them measured before they fall · Donors who fund lime, teak and apprentice hands · Owners of old houses who want honest advice before the sledgehammer
These four are promises this page makes on your behalf. Keep them or change them — they are not decoration.
Ways to give or join
Every figure is a real trade's real rate in this city: a surveyor-led measured drawing priced by the day, lime plaster by the square metre at a heritage mason's quote, an apprentice's fair monthly stipend. Conservation is mostly patient labour at honest wages, and the cards say whose.
One-time
A carved doorway or window measured, drawn and photographed to archive standard in one field day — the record that survives whatever the lane decides later.
One-time
A wooden balcony rail, a teak bracket, a metre of lime plaster — one small repair done with the right materials by paid craftsmen, before the small fault becomes the demolition's excuse.
Monthly
The masons who know lime are in their sixties. This is a fair monthly stipend share for a young mason or carpenter apprenticed to one — the only way the knowledge outlives the knee.
Volunteer
Hold the staff, call the tape, learn why the courtyard drains where it does. Architecture students get field hours; everyone else gets the old city at eye level. One Sunday a month.
In kind
Old photographs of the lanes, family papers about a house, a drawing board, acid-free folders. Things, not money — brought to the office, scanned or shelved, and returned if you only meant to lend them.
Pick the way you want to help and it lands in the form below. Picking another replaces it — this page records one intention at a time, not a basket. NO MONEY MOVES ON THIS PAGE: nothing is charged, deducted or collected here, and how giving actually happens is written under the form.
On the ground
No ruin-porn and no real monument claimed as our work. These frames are placeholders for photographs from your own files — a survey underway, lime being worked, a doorway's detail — of houses whose owners consented, with no house identifiable beyond what its owner allowed.
How giving actually happens
Paste the society's bank account name, number and IFSC here, and the UPI ID if you use one — exactly as the bank has them. State plainly that no one collects cash on sites or at houses in the society's name.
Words you have permission to print
A house's owner on what the drawing or the repair meant, or a master mason on the apprentice — in their own words, with their name, collected with written permission.
Your honest record
Last quarter's numbers, dated: houses documented, repairs completed, apprentices supported, money in and what it bought. The audited annual figures go here exactly as the auditor wrote them.
The frames above are placeholder photographs of the kind of work this page is about — not this organisation's own record, and never a person whose face buys sympathy. The slots below are deliberately blank: this is a template, and an invented beneficiary count, an invented donor or an invented 80G number would be a lie on a page asking people to give — and inventing the tax registration is an offence. Fill each slot with something real and checkable, then delete this line.
How it works
Three steps, and money moves only to the society's account, only against a receipt.
The form records what you picked and how to reach you. Nothing is charged here — this page cannot take money, by design. Owners of old houses use the same form; the advice visit is free and comes with no obligation and no lecture.
Within the week, with the account details and receipt mechanics — and for repair pledges, the current repair list with each job's quotation, so you choose what your money mends.
The archive is open by appointment; the quarterly sheet lists drawings and repairs. The best proof is standing under a balcony that did not fall.
Before you give
No. Protected monuments belong to the ASI and the state department, by law, and a private society has no business on their scaffolding. Our whole field is the unprotected fabric — the private deodis, the lane houses — which has no guardian but its owners and, with their consent, us.
Cement is cheaper and it kills old walls: it traps moisture in lime-built masonry and the wall rots behind the patch. Lime breathes as the wall breathes. Our masons work at the wall's chemistry, the method is noted in the file, and the repair costs what the card honestly says.
No. The advice visit is free, written, and yours to ignore. Some owners repair, some sell, some demolish — it is their house. What we ask for, always, is the chance to measure and photograph first, so that whatever happens, the record survives.
'Saved' is not a word we use about other people's houses. The archive holds the drawings we have made and the file lists the repairs we have completed — both countable, both checkable by appointment. The lanes will be kept, if they are kept, by their owners; we are the friends with the tape measure.
Only if the 80G cell at the top carries a current number, checkable on the income-tax portal. The office shares the certificate before any transfer; an empty cell means ask first.
The one thing this page asks
One form, one intention — a donor, a Sunday measurer, or an owner wanting the free advice visit. The office replies within the week; nothing is charged or collected here.
You want to help with
Nothing yet — pick a way to give above, or say it in the form.
Three required fields: a name, a way to reply, and which of four conversations this is. Deliberately absent: any house address field — an owner's address is asked only when the owner offers it, because a heritage list in the wrong hands becomes a demolition shopping list. No amount field, no PAN, no payment field — this page records intentions and takes nothing.
Your details go to the society's office for this one reply. Owners' houses, names and addresses are never published or shared without written consent. Nothing is sold.