Asha Brick Field

Our place is in Ward Number 6 in Deoria, right by the Hanuman Mandir. You can usually hear the temple bells from where we stand in the yard. It is a busy little spot, especially on Tuesdays when more people are coming and going for prayers. We have been making bricks here for a long time. It is messy work. The mud gets under your fingernails and stays there no matter how much you scrub. We have a routine that has not changed much in years. We dig, we mold, and we wait for the sun to do its job. Sometimes the weather here does not cooperate, and we have to cover everything up fast with plastic sheets. My brother and I manage the day-to-day stuff. We do not have a receptionist or a big computer system. Everything is written down in a ledger that is getting a bit worn at the edges. Customers usually just walk in from the street. They might be building a new room for their kids or fixing a compound wall. We show them what we have piled up. It is not a glamorous job, and the heat from the chimney can be a lot during the peak of summer. But there is a sense of doing something real when you see a house being built with bricks that came from your own dirt. We just keep our heads down and keep working every day.