Dhara Brick Field

Down in Village Lukia, things are a lot quieter than in the big cities. Dhara Brick Field is out here in the Sirathu tehsil of Kaushambi district. Our work is tied directly to the earth. We spend our days dealing with soil, water, and the heat of the kiln. Making bricks is an old-fashioned process, and we still do a lot of it the way it has always been done. You can see the tall chimney of our kiln from a distance across the fields. It is a seasonal job mostly, depending on the weather and the rain. When it is dry, we are busy from dawn until dusk molding the mud and lining up the bricks to dry in the sun. It is a dusty, dirty job, and there is no way around that. We do not have an office with fancy chairs; we usually just sit outside or under a small tin roof to talk to people who come to buy bricks for their walls or houses. Most of our customers are locals from nearby villages who are building something small. We know the land here well, and we know what kind of clay makes a sturdy brick. It is a hard way to make a living, working in the sun and smoke, but there is something satisfying about seeing a pile of finished bricks ready to go. We just take it one day at a time.