Harsh Rice Mill

If you go to Paliganj and find the post office, we are right across from it. We’re near the Banauli Khurd area. The mill has been part of this spot for a while. It’s a lot of manual labor, moving heavy sacks from one corner to the other. We get the paddy from the local growers around here. When the harvest season hits, the whole place gets crowded with bags piled up to the ceiling. We have a couple of old hullers that make a lot of noise. Sometimes they break down and we have to spend half a day fixing a belt or a motor. My clothes always smell like toasted grain by the time I get home. It’s just the way it is. We don't really have a big front office. There’s just a small corner with a wooden stool and a desk where we do the paperwork. It gets pretty hot in the summer under the tin roof, so we try to get the bulk of the work done in the early morning. People come from the surrounding villages because they know we've been here. We don't promise anything special, we just run the machines and give people their rice. It’s a simple life. We close up once the last customer leaves, which varies from day to day. It’s a lot of dust and hard work, but we like it. The work keeps us going through the year.