Samarth Dal Mills

Samarth Dal Mills is out here in Tuljapur, right on Nh No.211. It’s a dry area in the Umanabad district. Being on the highway means we see a lot of trucks passing by heading to different cities. We process dal here. It’s a lot of work involving big sieves and drying floors. The sun is our best friend for drying the pulses before they go into the mill. We have a large yard where we spread things out. You have to keep an eye on the weather because a sudden rain can cause a lot of trouble. The dust from the pulses gets everywhere, in your hair and on your clothes. We’ve been operating here for several years now. It’s a family-run kind of place. We don't have a big corporate office. Our office is a small room with a heavy wooden desk and some old filing cabinets. We sell to wholesalers who take the dal to the bigger markets. The machines are old but they work well if you maintain them. We do the repairs ourselves most of the time. It’s a loud environment when the mills are running, so we use hand signals to talk to each other. When the day is over, we wash up and watch the trucks go by on the road. It's a simple routine that we've followed for a very long time now. We just do the work.