Suman Papad

Suman Papad is located on Dada Saheb Road 3 in Vadodara. If you walk down this road, you can often tell where we are before you see the sign because of the smell of spices and dough. We are a small operation, and most of our work involves rolling out the papads and letting them dry. It is a process that depends a lot on the sun and the air. We have large wooden boards and thin rollers that have been used for years. The floor is often dusted with a bit of flour, and we wear simple clothes that we don't mind getting a bit messy. It is a lot of physical work, standing and moving the trays around. We have a small area in the front where we package the finished papads into plastic bags and seal them up. We don't have any fancy machinery for this; we do it by hand. Neighbors often come by to buy a few packets for their dinner. We have a big ledger where we keep track of who owes what and what we have sold. Vadodara is a place where people appreciate good food, so we just focus on making things the way we always have. We don't use any big words to describe what we do. It is just about mixing the right amount of pepper and salt and making sure they dry properly on Dada Saheb Road.