Manikanta Granites

Down here in Budawada village, near Chimakurthy, everything is about the stone. Manikanta Granites is basically a yard where we process and keep granite blocks. Prakasam district is known for this stuff, so there are a lot of us doing similar work. Our day starts early because the sun gets too hot to work outside later on. We have the big cutting machines and polishers running most of the time. It is a noisy business and there is water and stone slurry everywhere. We spend our time checking the blocks for any flaws before we start cutting them into slabs. It takes a lot of patience. Sometimes a block looks good on the outside but has a hidden vein that ruins the whole thing once you cut into it. That's just part of the job. We deal with builders and contractors mostly. They come out here to see the stock in person. We don’t have a fancy showroom. It’s just the raw stone out in the open. It’s hard work, moving these massive pieces of rock around with the loaders. By the time we close up, we are pretty tired and covered in dust. But it’s what people do around here. We’ve been part of this landscape for years, just cutting stone and loading it onto trucks heading out to the city. Sometimes the rain slows us down, but we just wait for it to clear and get back to the saws. It's a living, and it keeps us busy.