Ram Bharosi Lal Som Dutt Dal Mill

It is very noisy here most of the day at Agra Gate. The machines we use for grinding and sorting the dal never really stop until it gets late in the evening. This mill has been running for a long time near the railway station. You can smell the raw lentils and the fine dust in the air from a block away. It is a heavy and tiring job. We deal with big trucks that come in loaded with raw grains from the local farms. Then we process them and pack the finished dal into those big white sacks. My clothes are always covered in a thin layer of yellow dust by the time I go home. We do not have a reception desk or a waiting area. If you want to talk to us, you just walk right into the processing shed and find someone. It gets very hot in the summer months because of the tin roof overhead. We have a lot of workers who have stayed with us for over ten years. They know the sound of the machines better than anyone else. If a belt slips or a motor sounds wrong, they hear it instantly. We handle different kinds of pulses like moong and toor throughout the week. The name on our board is long, but people just call us the mill near the station. Sometimes the heavy trains shaking the ground make our windows rattle.