R C Bricks

If you go down to Arumbanur Village, you’ll find us at 99/3. It’s called 11 Unit in Malayandipuram, though most people just know it by the piles of bricks sitting near the road. We don’t have a fancy entrance or a receptionist. Usually, you’ll find one of us covered in dust near the kiln or checking the stacks. The work is heavy. Every brick has to be handled a few times before it’s ready to go out. My back usually aches by five o'clock, but that’s just part of it. We use the local soil mostly. It has a certain color to it that people in Malayandipuram seem to like for their walls. When the monsoon hits, everything slows down because we can’t dry anything outside. Those are the days we spend fixing the equipment or cleaning up the yard. It gets pretty quiet then. But when the sun is out, it’s loud and busy. We have a small radio that plays local songs while we work, helps the time go by faster. We’ve been here at 99/3 for a good while now. It’s not a complicated business. You make the bricks, you dry them, and you sell them to whoever needs them for a project. It’s just honest work in a small village where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. We just try to get through the orders.