The irony is that the piped gas itself doesn’t follow its own schedule, as it comes late and leaves earlier than its schedule. The low pressure compounds the ordeal, particularly of women. On a lighter note, women pun on the descriptor ‘Sui’ as ‘sooii’, an Urdu word translated as a needle: the piped gas that seems to be coming as if from the eye of a needle is called Sui gas.
Winter exposes the apathetic systems that fail the most vulnerable. Children of areas receiving low pressure of gas leave for school breakfast-less, as breakfast could not be readied in time. They shiver because they have to take a bath in cold water as instant geysers remain snuffed out. Guests are welcomed only during the blessed hours of gas availability. Food is the most cherished joy in winter. Random feel-likes, savouring tea or coffee at whims and foods that take longer cooking times like greens, gajar halwa and gajrela — which can send us down the nostalgic memory lane — are petering out of our winter life. Randomness, asymmetrical running of life, is the beauty of life, saving it from becoming robotically bland, insipid and tedious. A life run on scheduled services is transformed into a manual of a machine.
The mothers of poor households in Punjab pinned sanguine hopes on the woman chief minister of Punjab that she would understand the constraints of women. During the winter holidays, the circadian rhythm of students changes completely – staying up late and then sleeping in. After 8.30 in the morning and evening, gas, being not available, forces the households to use expensive LPG or eat fast food and have ready-made breakfasts. This change in dietary patterns combined with a sedentary lifestyle induced by winter hibernation causes health issues like obesity and junk food addiction. The winter, as compared with summer, is a time when a home turns into an eatery offering motherly delicacies. This time must be availed of by parents to wean their children off the junk food, and it is only possible when nonstop availability of gas is ensured.
The family time is available in abundance in winter. Parents must consciously make the most of this time through evening chats, storytelling and family entertainment. With the advent of social media, family entertainment has yielded to solo binge-watching. The youth have no fault of their own in it; they have been cornered to the digital screen by TV entertainment punctuated with long commercial breaks. Also, the long and frequent unscheduled power outages render the uninterrupted entertainment still a dream.
The subscription of streaming services is still beyond the reach of many. When feeding the children becomes an existential question, the concern for arranging entertainment for children gets the least parental attention. The cable TV operators have also failed in providing uninterrupted and ad-free entertainment. Consequently, family entertainment disappeared, resulting in familial disconnectedness. This diluted connectedness was capitalised upon by social media, which further aggravated the disconnectedness to the degree of loneliness.
The families belonging to the lower- to middle-income groups can’t afford recreational outings in restaurants accessed through warm and cosy vehicles. Their simple human joys — in-home entertainment, home-baked food, tea sessions, board games and storytelling — owe to the non-stop supply of gas and electricity. If it sounds utopian, let it be. A happy family man’s performative efficiency in the outer world is much higher than the unhappy one’s.