Shankarrao Gaapatrao Patil & Co

We've been at the Rice House in Itwari for a long time now. Most people around here know Shankarrao Gaapatrao Patil & Co just by the old sign on the door. It’s always a bit busy around the market area, especially in the mornings when the trucks start rolling in. We handle a lot of grain, mostly rice, as the building name suggests. The office isn't anything fancy, just a couple of desks and some old ledgers, though we use computers now. My grandfather started things off, and we just kept it going. It’s dusty work sometimes. You get used to the smell of jute bags and the sound of the scales. We don’t really do big advertisements or anything like that. Most of the people we deal with have been coming to us for decades. Sometimes the rain makes the roads in Itwari a mess, but the work doesn't stop. We spend most of our day talking to farmers and other traders. It is just honest work. We try to keep things simple. If someone needs a load of rice, we get it sorted. There’s no big corporate ladder here, just a few of us making sure the orders go out on time. The phone rings a lot, and there’s always someone dropping by for tea and a chat about the market prices. That is just how it goes here every single day.