Akshaya Rice Mill

The smell of grain is the first thing you notice when you walk into Mahabub Nagar. Our mill is at 67/34 and you can hear the machines humming from the street. It is a constant sound, like a heartbeat for this part of the block. I usually start the engines around six in the morning. The dust gets everywhere, no matter how much we sweep. It settles on the ledges and the light bulbs. We have piles of sacks waiting to be filled near the entrance. Local farmers bring their harvest here in old trailers and tractors. We talk about the weather and the prices while the machines do their work. It is loud, so we have to shout a bit to be heard over the grinding. My clothes are always covered in a fine white powder by the time I go home for lunch. The floor is concrete and it has some cracks from years of heavy loads being moved around. We have a small desk in the corner where we keep the logs, but mostly we are on our feet moving from one station to another. It is heavy work. My shoulders get stiff by Friday, but there is something good about seeing the finished rice piles. We don't have a big sign or anything, just the sound and the location that people know. It is just a simple mill doing what it has always done for the people who live and farm around here.