Incredible India! Around 95 Percent Families Of A Village Trapped In Life Of Cigarette Rolling In West Bengal

Sagira Ansari sits on a dusty sack outside her uneven brick home in this poor town in eastern India, her legs folded beneath her. She cracks her knuckles, then rubs charcoal ash between her palms.

With the unthinking swiftness of a movement performed countless times before, she slashes a naked razor blade into a square-cut leaf to trim off the veins. She drops in flakes of tobacco, packs them with her thumbs, rolls the leaf tightly between her fingers and ties it off with two twists of a red thread.

For eight hours a day, Sagira makes bidis—thin brown cigarettes that are as central to Indian life as chai and flat bread.

From: http://ping.fm/nm0IF