Venkatadurga Rice Mill

The mill here on Kakinada Road in Jaggampeta has been our main spot for a long time. The address is 3-6-9-521, right where the traffic starts to get heavy during the day. It’s a basic setup for Venkatadurga Rice Mill, mostly just a huge warehouse space with the hullers and the polishers humming along. It gets incredibly dusty inside when we are in the middle of a big batch. You can smell the rice husk from a mile away on some days. I spend most of my time checking the machines and making sure nothing is getting jammed up. We get a lot of tractors pulling in from the surrounding farms, especially after the harvest. It’s a lot of shouting to be heard over the noise of the engines. We don’t have an office with air conditioning or anything like that, just a small desk in the corner where we keep the books. The floor is usually covered in grain, and we are constantly sweeping it up just to stay organized. It’s hard work and the hours are long when the season is busy, but it keeps us going. We know most of the people who come by here because they’ve been coming to us for years. There isn’t much to the place besides the work itself. We just focus on getting the paddy processed and loaded onto the trucks so the drivers can get back on the road to Kakinada.