Agni Rice Mill

Up in Nalbari, near the post of Boruae Nagar, is where you will find Agni Rice Mill. It’s a rural setting, so the pace of life is a bit different than what you find in the bigger towns. The mill is a central part of the work around here, especially after the harvest when the trucks start arriving. We deal with a lot of dust and noise from the milling machines, which is just part of the job. The building itself has seen better days, but it's sturdy and gets the work done. We spend long hours watching the machines to make sure everything is running right and the rice is coming out clean. In the rainy season, the roads around Nalbari can get pretty muddy, which makes transport a bit of a challenge. We have a small crew and most of us have lived in this district our whole lives. We don't have a fancy website or a marketing team; we just rely on the fact that people know where we are and what we do. It’s a lot of manual labor, hauling sacks and loading them up, but it’s honest work. The air always smells like toasted grain and earth around the mill, which is a smell you get used to pretty quickly. When the harvest is in, we barely have time to sit down, but we make sure the tea break happens every afternoon regardless of how much paddy is waiting.