Nedumesira Mill

The mill is right at Market Junction on K K Road, which is a very busy part of Eerayil Kadavu. You can’t really miss the sound of the machines if you are walking by the A block. Nedumesira Mill is a place where there is always a layer of fine dust on everything, no matter how much we try to sweep it away. It’s the kind of dust that gets into your clothes and hair by the time the day is done. We have been working out of this spot for a long time, and the building has that old smell of grain and heavy oil. The Market Junction is always loud with people shouting and vehicles honking, so it’s never quiet here. We spend most of our time lifting heavy sacks and feeding them into the grinders. It’s hard on the back, but we are used to it by now. The Eerayil Kadavu area gets very humid, so we usually have the big front doors wide open to catch any breeze from the road. Customers come in with their own bags sometimes, and we have to weigh everything out carefully on the old scales. It’s a very manual process, not like those big modern factories you see on television. We just do things the way they have always been done here on K K Road. At the end of the week, we spend the whole Saturday afternoon just greasing the gears and cleaning the floor.