Residents of the katchi abadi along the Haro River in Hassanabdal have kept their centuries-old water-run flour mills known as jandars.

The mills are powered by fast-flowing water from the nearby river, which turns the heavy grindstone to produce flour.

Though there are many machine-run flour mills in the area, residents of Hassanabdal and its surrounding areas prefer to grind their wheat grains in the traditional water-run mills due to a wide-held belief that wheat from jandars is of better quality and tastes better than mass produced flour. Owners do not charge money for grinding wheat, rather take a share from the ground flour.

Flour ground in water mills remains safe from insects and other pests for many months

“Flour ground in water mills remains safe from insects and other pests for many months. That is why you see so many people waiting with sacks of wheat to be ground,” said a jandar owner Khalid Mehmood.

Mr Mehmood has been operating his watermill since he was a young boy and said he will continue with his forefathers’ business. In reply to a question, he said that while there is a long list of benefits of watermill ground flour, the one disadvantage is that the process is very time consuming. It takes several hours to grind a kilogramme of wheat, he said.

“I have been operating this mill for a long time and I charge less than what machine-run flour mills do. For grinding 2,000 kilogrammes of flour, we take 50kg of flour,” said Nisar Khan, the owner of another jandar.

He said the mill has been in his family for generations, adding that traditional water mills are environment-friendly and do not consume fuel.

Because it does not need electricity to run, people of the area do not have to worry about the shortage of flour when during prolonged hours of load-shedding, said Shahid Khan, a local flour mill operator whose family has been in the profession for many decades. The cost of machine-ground flour increases with increases in the prices of fuel, he said.

“Jandar-produced flour is cheap because the owner only keeps a kg of flour for grinding 5kg,” he said, adding that there were no factors such as fuel to drive the price up.

“Flour from water-run mills tastes better which is why people come from far away to grind their wheat,” said Sadaqat Ali, who had travelled 20 kilometres to the mill.

Another regular customer at the mill, Dr Arshad said flour from the mill does not spoil for month and that the mills also do not harm the environment as it does not require fuel.

The traditional jandars cater to the flour requirements of the local population. Comprising of a small 12x14 foot room and only requiring a small capital investment, these mills grind wheat and maize flour in fine and super fine quality in addition to chokar (chaff) and sooji. A local archaeologist, AG Lone, said the jandars of Hassanabdal are almost 300 years old.

“They should be preserved for the future generations,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2016