Pandunang Rice Mill

Pandunang Rice Mill is right in Sonapalashi village. If you know the Memari area, you probably know where the mill is. It’s noisy when the machines are running, you can hear it from the post office down the road. We spend our days covered in a bit of dust, but that’s just how it is with rice. My family has been in Bardhaman district for a long time. We don’t have a big corporate office or anything like that. Just the mill and the yard where the trucks pull in. It’s simple work, really. We take the paddy and we process it. Some days are longer than others, especially during the harvest. We don’t really do any fancy advertising. People just know we are here. They bring their carts and we get to it. Sometimes the machinery breaks down and we have to spend the whole afternoon fixing it. That’s just part of the job. We don’t make big promises. We just try to get the bags filled and moved out. It’s a local operation. Most of the guys working here live right in the village. We talk about the local news while we work. It’s a decent life. We’re not looking to become some huge company. We just want to keep the mill running and make sure the grain is handled right. Every evening we shut the gates and head home to the village. It’s been this way for years now and we're okay with that.