Vicky Rice Mill

If you come down National Highway 78 near Radhapur, you’ll find Vicky Rice Mill. We are tucked away in the Pratapgarh area of Sitapur, within Surguja. The sound of the hulling machines is pretty much all you hear around here during the harvest season. It’s a dusty place, there’s no way around that when you’re processing rice all day. We have big piles of paddy waiting to be milled, and the air always smells like dry husks. Farmers from the surrounding villages bring their tractors and carts filled with grain. We spend a lot of time checking the quality of the rice and making sure the machines are running right. Sometimes a belt snaps and everything stops until we can fix it. It’s not a quiet or clean job, but it’s what we do. My family has been involved in this for a long time. We have a small office room where we sit and talk to the farmers about their crop and the weather. The roof is made of corrugated tin, so when it rains, you can't hear yourself think. We load the finished rice into jute bags and stack them up for the trucks to take away. It’s hard work and the days are long, especially when there is a lot of grain coming in. We don't have fancy signs, just the mill and the sound of work. We keep going until the last batch is done.