Aalayam Kaappom Foundation

We are located in Mylapore, at No.12 Nagarathnam Colony. It’s a quiet little pocket inside Sir PS Sivasamy Colony. If you know Chennai, you know how busy Mylapore can get, but our street is actually pretty calm. We spend our time working on things related to temples and heritage. It's a lot of old documents and talking to people in different neighborhoods. The building we're in is an older style, which fits what we do. We don't have fancy glass walls or modern art. It’s mostly just shelves full of books and some old photos. Sometimes the neighborhood kids play cricket outside and it gets a bit noisy, but we don't mind. We've been here for a while now. Most of us grew up around here, so we know the area well. It's not really a job in the traditional sense. It's more like a group of us trying to keep track of things that might get forgotten. We have visitors occasionally who want to know about local history. We offer them some water or tea and just chat. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere. No one is running around in suits. We just wear our regular clothes and get on with the paperwork. The humidity in Chennai can be tough on the old papers, so we try to keep things dry as best as we can. It's just a small office in a nice colony, doing what we can for the local culture. We keep things pretty simple here.