Guru Nanak Dev Rice Mills

Guru Nanak Dev Rice Mills is located out in Ashrafpur Village, which is part of the Dasuya Tehsil in Hoshiarpur District. We are right along the Pathankot Highway, near the Badla post office. It is a good location because the highway connects us to everywhere, but we are still very much a village operation at heart. The mill is usually a hive of activity during the peak months. You can see the tall chimneys from a distance when you are driving down the highway. We’ve got a lot of space out here in Ashrafpur, which is lucky because the stacks of rice bags can get pretty high during a good harvest. The work is steady and repetitive. We unload the paddy, dry it if it's too damp, and then run it through the machines. It’s a lot of noise, but after a while, you don't even hear it anymore. The local guys from the village do most of the heavy lifting. We don’t use any fancy corporate language because that’s not who we are. We are just people working in the dirt and the heat to process the local harvest. Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate and the highway gets blocked, which makes things difficult for the loaders, but we manage. Being in Hoshiarpur, we see a lot of different types of grain coming through. We just take it day by day and try to keep the machines humming. It’s just how things go.