Navkhar Cardamom

We are based at 102, Amaravathi Nagar, and you can usually tell where we are because of the smell of spices in the air. Navkhar Cardamom is mostly about the work of sorting and grading the pods that come in. It’s a lot of manual labor, sitting and looking at the green pods to see which ones are the best for the bags. Our space in Amaravathi Nagar is more of a warehouse than a fancy shop. We have bags stacked up high, and there is always a layer of dust that smells like cardamom on everything. It’s just a few of us working here, and we spend most of our time talking while we work. We don't have any big mission statements or anything like that. We just focus on getting the cardamom ready to be sent off to the markets. Sometimes the harvest is good and we are very busy, and other times it’s a bit slower. We've lived in this area for a long time, so we know the local rhythms. The building gets a bit hot in the afternoons, but we have a couple of fans that help. It’s not the most glamorous job, but it’s what we know how to do. We take pride in just getting the work done and making sure the stuff is what it should be before the bags are tied up and hauled away by the transport trucks.