Ganesh Brick Field

Out here in Kumarganj, near the Narendra Dev University of Agriculture and Technology, things are pretty quiet. We run the brick field right here in the village. It’s mostly mud, water, and fire. We spend the days molding the clay and letting it dry in the sun before they go into the kiln. It's a lot of manual work. My hands are usually stained with red dust. The university is close by, so we see the students and staff passing by sometimes. We’ve been here for a good bit of time. The weather dictates how much we can do. When it rains, everything stops because the bricks won't dry. That's the hardest part of this business. We have a crew from the local area who knows how the soil works here. It’s not a clean job, obviously. There’s smoke and heat from the chimneys. We stack them high once they’re done. People from the nearby villages come with tractors to pick up their orders for house repairs or new walls. We don’t do much advertising. People just know we are here by the university. It’s honest work, even if it’s tiring. Sometimes the wood for the fire is damp and it takes forever to get the heat right. We just keep going, season after season. The piles of bricks grow and shrink depending on the time of year. It’s just how life is in the village. It's been like this for years.