KANTANAKUNTE VILLAGE: Breaking bricks with bare hands reminds one of a tenth degree Black Belt stacking up bricks and then striking a powerful blow with the heel of his palm to slice through them.
Forget slicing through them, a seventh standard school drop-out, 62-year-old K R Thimmegowda, who owns a few acres of agriculture land in his native Kantanakunte, makes bricks which may not only see a karate champion like Bruce Lee fail to break, but which will not even splinter if thrown forcefully from a height of 12 feet.
Thimmegowda, till now, has sold a whopping 18 crore such bricks. Thimmegowda was born and brought up in Kantanakunte village in Doddaballapura taluk. Unable to feed a big family due to financial struggles, a 16-year-old Thimmegowda decided to move to Bengaluru in search of work. He got a job as a cleaner at a small hotel near Kapali theatre. “The owner then encouraged me to take up a milk dairy agency in the morning. I started saving money from this and then went back to my village when I was 28,’’ Thimmegowda says.
It was some time in 1984 when he had his own family that he decided to get into brick-making.
“With the little savings, I plunged into making bricks and employed labourers. We made 400-1,000 bricks a day from November to March (non-rainy season), and kept them dry for a couple of months. We made more than one lakh bricks in six months and sold them. But these bricks were not strong and I used to lose many from breakage during transportation,’’ he says.
In the initial days, he used firewood to burn bricks. The heat would not be uniformly distributed and bricks would be half baked/burnt. This would make the bricks break easily. One of his labourers suggested using paddy chaff/hull. They get old soil, leave it for days in the open field, then filter it, make bricks from the mould, keep them dry for days. Once dried, they stack them up for months in the shade. “Keeping in dry shade for a year or 18 months makes the bricks strong. We ensure they are kept dry for at least a year,’’ Gowda says.
Venkatesh, who works with Thimmegowda, says, “We stack bricks and leave gaps in between. We pour chaff on top of the stack, and it settles down in the gaps between the bricks. Once it is burnt, the heat distributes uniformly through the bricks, making them strong.”Thimmegowda says, “We need at least a year to make these bricks stronger. In the last three decades, I have sold more than 18 crore bricks, some even outside Karnataka.”
BRICK BY BRICK
Old mud
12 to 18 months drying time
One month burning time
ashwini@newindianexpress.com