During the November winter of 2019 Aniyam was founded as a collective that would distribute warm clothes and quilts to the squatters in the Madurai city. The Tamil word Aniyam (அணியம்) comes from the folk performing art Parai Isai and it denotes the performance ready state of the Parai artistes. To us Aniyam stands for the service ready state of the volunteers. Aniyam gradually started expanding its work into various other charity and cultural domains — providing monthly ration supplies and food for the Transgender persons, and the elderly; mental health and crisis intervention support services through a dedicated 24×7 queer helpline; a dedicated monthly magazine and a publishing house to support the works on and by the queer and other hitherto marginalised sections; and various other cultural events under the banner queer cafe which provides a safe platform for budding and established queer artistes to showcase their talents.
Aniyam starts with a vision: Cultivating a society centered on inclusive love, transcending biases. A space fostering equality, embracing diverse expressions
One of the pet projects by the Aniyam Foundation is its 24×7 queer helpline called Sevigal (it’s a Tamil equivalent for Ears). The sole objective of this helpline is to provide mental health support,suicide prevention, and crisis support among the LGBTQIA+ community. Since its inception in 2020 we have answered 500+ phone calls from across India (majorly Tamil Nadu) covering self-awareness, depression, counselling, legal aid etc. Helpline services are available 24×7 in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English. Besides helpline services we continue to organise mental health campaigns across Tamil Nadu — not just in metropolitan cities but also in tier-two and tier-three cities. Thus far we have conducted such campaigns in Chennai, and Madurai. We also provide internships for students of psychology and social work and rigorously train them on various facets of queer life and their vulnerabilities. Post internship we imbibe some of these interns to campaign with us. Sevigal has also been working in close association with the Child Welfare Board of the state Government of Tamil Nadu. Owning to our campaign on gender non-conforming children the state government has started framing policies that are gender non-conforming children friendly.
In the year 2020 we have started a dedicated monthly e-magazine called Paalmanam (in English the Smell of Queerness) which carries stories, poetries, and interviews of and by the queer community. Paalmanam aims to build a queer vocabulary in Tamil and the stories published each month in vernacular language offers an intimate and refreshing insight into the various facets of queer lives through innovative artefacts such as movies, books, politics, legality, and society. Since 2020 Paalmanam produced 3 volumes of rich work that serves as a single largest collection of queer archive in Tamil in both digital and print form, so far. We also strive to maintain Paalmanam a disabled friendly magazine by providing audio recordings of the published works.
With an aim to publish works on Queerness and works by the queer authors and also to mainstream the works of the hitherto marginalised communities Aniyam publishing House was launched in January 2023. Two collections of inimitable queer poems by Poet Marakka, and by Poet Agni Pradeep were released at the inaugural event of the Aniyam Publishing House. And these books are doing well in the market. Several other collections of queer poetries, short stories, memoirs, and works of translation are forthcoming from the Aniyam Publishing House.
Through Pasippini Pokkuvom scheme we offer food and livelihood support to Transgender persons, persons infected with HIV, elederly and the children, in association with various other charity organization in several cities and towns across Tamil Nadu. Alongside food we also offer livelihood services by providing sewing machines to the needy.
Queer cafe is one of our cultural initiatives through which we launch budding queer artistes and also promote the works of established queer artistes. These are series of performance based events held across various cities of Tamilnadu in which cultural performances covering theatre, karaoke, poetry recitation, and stand-up comedies hosted across different genres and ouvere. Alongside performances we also conduct workshops with renowned artistes and showcase portraits, paintings, and photographs.
Alagu Jegan (he/they), the founder of the Aniyam Foundation, is a published poet. Their poems were presented at the Sahitya Academy conferences in Delhi and Shimla, and at the poetry conference hosted by the State Government of Arunachal Pradesh. An avid theatre practitioner with a decade long work experience in the IT sector, they have scripted and directed three stage plays so far.
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