I walked through the slushy lanes with huge iron doors with multiple fancy locks that open to the dark rooms bustling with machines and metal noise! Men, women and children worked in corners of the dark rooms along the lane, organised in various stages of the process. Unpolished locks and keys were made in differnt rooms, they were assembled in another room and finally polished else where at the end of the lane! The labour is cheap and child labour is rampant, hence supervisors a bit hesitant to open doors to the camera!

At the heart of spice trade in Cochin, there runs an exclusive Ginger export house run by the Gujarathi merchants. A historical piece of building that reminds us of a prosperous era in trade! Local women workers clean, strain and dry ginger at the warehouse for a daily wage of 60 to 75 rupees – bare enough to meet the dead ends?

Ginger has great medicinal value yet its smell and dust suffocate any normal visitor after 5 minutes.

The story is the same all over India, they carry many things over their heads!

After

Japanese website that puts an antique weathered effect on images in just one click.