King Brick Field

My family has been at this for a while now here in Bilaspur. We started out small at the King Brick Field near the Raiganj police station area. It’s hard work, mostly outdoor stuff, so we’re always checking the weather. If it rains, everything stops and we have to cover the raw bricks with plastic sheets. We have a crew from around Uttar Dinajpur who knows how to handle the clay and the kilns properly. It’s not a fancy place by any means. Just a big field with stacks of bricks and smoke from the chimneys when we’re firing a new batch. People usually just drop by the site when they need a load for a new house or a boundary wall. We spend most of our days out in the dust and heat. Sometimes the truck drivers get stuck if the road is muddy after a big storm. It’s just the way it goes here. We don’t really do much office work or anything like that. Most of the business is done with a handshake or a quick chat by the gate. We keep the inventory stacked up in neat rows. You can see the piles from the main road if you're heading toward the station. It’s a lot of manual labor, loading and unloading by hand, but it keeps us busy through the season. We just try to keep the kilns running when the sun is out. It’s a quiet life mostly, just focused on getting things done.