Gautam Onions

If you come down to the Market Yard in Pimpalgaon Baswant, you’ll find us there. Gautam Onions is basically right where the action is. This place is famous for onions, so it’s always crowded with tractors and trucks from the local farms. We spend our days surrounded by crates and the strong smell of fresh produce. It's dusty work, and the sun gets really hot in the afternoons under the tin roofs. My family has been around the market for a long time. We aren't doing anything fancy; we just buy and sell what the farmers bring in. Sometimes the prices are up, sometimes they're down, and we just deal with it as it comes. We have a small shed where we keep things out of the rain. It’s mostly manual labor, lifting heavy bags and checking the quality of the skins to make sure they aren't rotting. We drink a lot of sweet tea while waiting for the next load to arrive. The noise of the auctions is always in the background, which makes it hard to hear sometimes. It’s a tough life but it’s what we know. We don't have a big office with air conditioning or fancy chairs. Our hands are usually dirty by the end of the day from handling the crops. People know us by name around here because we've been on this patch for years. We don't use much technology, just a basic ledger and our phones to keep track of everything. It’s honest, simple work.