Ramkrushna Anaj Bhandar

Ramkrushna Anaj Bhandar is right in the middle of the Grain Market. It’s a busy place every morning when the trucks start rolling in. We spend a lot of time just moving bags around and checking the quality of what comes in. The market is always dusty and loud, but that is where we have always been. There is a specific smell to the air here, like dry earth and old burlap sacks. My father worked here before me, and not much has changed since then. We have the same heavy wooden tables and the big scales that we use every single day. Some of the other traders are friends we've known for twenty years or more. We drink tea together when the rush slows down around noon. The sun hits the front of the shop pretty hard in the afternoon, so we pull the shutters down halfway to keep it cool inside. It isn't a modern shop with glass doors or air conditioning. It’s just a place for grain. You can hear the carts rattling on the stones outside all day long. Sometimes we lose track of time because there is always another load to deal with. We don’t really bother with fancy paperwork if we can help it. Just keeping things simple works for us. If you walk through the Grain Market, you will see us there near the corner. The birds come in sometimes to pick at the stray seeds on the floor. We don't really mind them much. It's just a regular life here.