Aalayam Kanden Trust believes that ample and accurate documentation of heritage sites is essential to provide the right information to the right audience at the right time. Moreover, today, several heritage artifacts go stolen, or several monuments crumble and it is impossible to recover or recreate them due to the lack of authentic documentation. Inscriptions in several sites have been lost to time and but for the documentation, one would be blind to several pages of history. It is in this regard, that Aalayam Kanden has undertaken to document the history, mythology and epigraphy of lesser known heritage sites. Apart from six publications brought out in as many years, one of the major achievements of the trust has been the cultural documentation of the river Cooum in Chennai.

Cooum, is currently the waste water disposal mechanism for the growing city. In order to bring better respect and dignity to the once-holy river, the trust embarked upon a project to document all the lesser-known sites along the river. The output was a book released in Februrary 2017, titled “The Gods of the Holy Koovam”. All proceeds from this book have been donated to the upkeep and maintenance of the Madras Literary Society library, one of the oldest libraries in Chennai and British landmark on the banks of the Cooum river.