Shatabdi Rice Mills

Down in Village Jandwala, we are surrounded by fields on all sides. Shatabdi Rice Mills sits right at the junction of Gt Road and Bhatinda Road, near the Link Road in Malluula. It is a busy spot here in Muksar district. Usually, the trucks start showing up before the sun is even up. We spend our days watching the sky and hoping the rain doesn’t come while we’re trying to dry the grain. The mill has been a part of this landscape for quite some time now. We have a small crew from the village who handle all the sorting and de-husking. It is a lot of manual work, looking for stones and making sure the grain looks right. We don’t have a fancy office with air conditioning. You’ll mostly find us out on the loading platform or inside the shed. The smell of raw rice is always around us, that thick, earthy smell that gets into your hair and clothes. Some days feel a lot longer than others, especially when we have a big shipment to get out to the city. We usually eat our lunch together under the big tree out front when we get a break. Most of the farmers who bring their crop are neighbors we’ve known forever. We talk about the prices and how the soil is doing this season. It is a simple way of living, just moving the grain from the fields to the bags and waiting for the next harvest to begin.