Hazi Brick Field

Started the fire at Hazi Brick Field early this morning. It’s located in Mirzapur, right in the Beldanga area of Murshidabad. The air gets quite thick with smoke when the kilns are going full blast, but that is just how it is around here. We have been in this village for a long time. People from around the district know where to find the field. The work depends a lot on the weather. If it rains, everything stops and we have to cover the raw bricks with plastic sheets. It is a messy job. My hands are usually covered in clay by noon. We get a lot of trucks coming in from the main road. Most days, we are just busy stacking and counting. It isn’t fancy work. Some days are longer than others, especially when a big order needs to be loaded before the sun goes down. The workers stay in small huts nearby. We drink a lot of tea to keep going through the shifts. You can see the tall chimney from quite a distance away across the fields. Sometimes the mud is too wet to mold properly, so we just wait. That is the rhythm of life in Mirzapur. We don't have a big office or anything, just a small shed where we keep the books. It gets dusty, but we are used to it by now. The neighbors in Beldanga are good people, and we all know each other well enough.