J. K. Cane Industries

The workshop for J. K. Cane Industries is located at Anugraham in Pathirappally. It is a quiet enough area most of the time, though we make a bit of noise once we start working. The smell of raw cane is the first thing you notice when you walk into the yard. We have a few guys who have been with us for years, and they know exactly how to handle the material. The house, Anugraham, is where we keep the main office and some of the finished items. We spend a lot of our time out in the shed where the actual work happens. It is a lot of manual labor. We don't use many machines, so it takes a bit of time to get through everything. Pathirappally is a nice place to work because it isn't as loud as the city center. We get the raw materials delivered on big trucks and then we have to sort through them by hand. Some days the humidity makes the cane hard to work with, so we just have to be patient. We drink a lot of water and try to stay in the shade during the afternoon. It is honest work and we don't try to make it sound like anything else. We just make what we make and hope the rain stays away while the stuff is drying outside. The floors are always covered in scraps and shavings that we sweep up at the end of the week.