Aswath Dry Chilli Trading Co.

Our place is in Sriramarangapuram Village. It's right near the compound, so most folks around here can point you to us easily. We are Aswath Dry Chilli Trading Co. and we’ve been doing this for years. The work is mostly about drying and sorting chillies under the sun. It’s a lot of manual labor. We don't have a big fancy sign. Usually, you can tell where we are by the red color on the ground. We work with the local growers. They bring their bags on tractors or carts. It’s a noisy business sometimes. We spend the whole day outdoors or in the shed. The air is always sharp because of the spice. It makes you sneeze if you aren't careful. We just try to keep the quality decent. We don't bother with big marketing or anything. We just trade what comes in. The village is small, so everyone knows everyone else. Sometimes the rain messes up our schedule, but we manage. My cousins help out with the heavy lifting. We start early in the morning when it’s still cool. By noon it gets very hot. We sit in the shade and have tea before getting back to the bags. The compound wall is a good landmark for people who aren't from around here. We have some old tarps we use to cover the chillies if the clouds look heavy. You learn to read the sky when you work outdoors like this.