Suresh Gopi says efforts on to control LPG crisis.
Home Ministry runs 24×7 control room with Information, Broadcasting and Petroleum ministries to monitor situation and coordinate response.
The cylinder arrived this morning, and I wept.
My name is Kavitha, and I live in a small apartment in Thrissur with my mother-in-law, who is seventy-three and needs her nebulizer four times a day. For the past eleven days, we have been cooking on a small kerosene stove we borrowed from a neighbor, rationing every drop, eating cold rice some nights because the fuel ran out before the dal was done.
The cylinder is heavy, gloriously heavy. The delivery man, a young boy named Sunil with tired eyes and a kind smile, helped me carry it to the kitchen. “Madam, very difficult to get,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “But some supply came today. You are lucky.”
Lucky. What a strange word for this moment.
I think of the thousands of women across India this morning who are having the same conversation with themselves, the same prayer of gratitude. I think of my sister in Chennai, who sent me a voice message last night, her voice thin with worry because her youngest has a fever and she couldn’t boil water for his bath. I think of the tea stall on my corner, dark and silent for five days now, its owner sitting on a plastic chair staring at nothing, his entire livelihood suspended because gas is for homes first, businesses later.
The minister spoke today. Suresh Gopi, they call him. He said efforts are underway. He said avenues are opening. He said the Prime Minister has spoken to countries about the Hormuz Strait. I read his words on my phone while my mother-in-law slept, her breathing finally steady after the nebulizer treatment the new cylinder made possible.
I don’t understand the Hormuz Strait. I don’t understand Brent crude or West Texas Intermediate or why oil prices jumped nine percent today. But I understand what it means to watch an old woman struggle for air and have nothing to give her but worry. I understand what it means to tell your children, “Not now, maybe tomorrow,” when they ask for something hot to eat.
My neighbor, Leela, is a widow who lives alone two floors down. She came to my door this morning, hesitant, embarrassed. Her cylinder ran out four days ago. She has been boiling water in an electric kettle for her tea, but the electricity is unpredictable now, cut for hours at a time. She asked if she could heat some food on my stove tonight. Just a small pot, she said. Just for one meal.
Of course, I said. Of course.
We are all learning new math. How many meals from one cylinder. How many neighbors can share a single flame. How many days until the next delivery, if it comes at all. The minister says priority is being given to hospitals and crematoriums. I understand this. It is right. But I also think of Leela, alone in her apartment, eating cold food in the dark, and I wonder if anyone’s priority list includes her.
The news says oil is above one hundred dollars a barrel now. One hundred dollars. I try to imagine a barrel, what it looks like, how many cylinders it makes. But numbers that big don’t fit in my kitchen. What fits is the small blue flame under my pot, the whistle of the pressure cooker, the smell of sambar that drifts through my window and makes the whole building feel alive again.
My son calls from Bangalore. He is a software engineer, twenty-four years old, living in a paying guest arrangement with three other boys. “Amma, how is things there? “We heard about the LPG crisis. Are you okay?”
I tell him about the new cylinder. I tell him about Leela coming to share my stove. I tell him not to worry, that the minister said things are under control. I do not tell him that I cried when the cylinder arrived. I do not tell him that I have started measuring each meal in whispers, calculating how long this one bottle must last, praying that the next one comes before the flame dies.
“Why is this happening, Amma?” he asks. “What is this Hormuz thing they keep talking about?”
I have no answer. I know that somewhere far away, ships are not moving, straits are blocked, countries are negotiating. I know that our Prime Minister has spoken to other leaders, asking for exemptions, asking for help. I know that the minister cannot reveal everything because of diplomatic sensitivities.
But diplomacy does not fill my mother-in-law’s nebulizer. Diplomacy does not warm the food for Leela’s dinner. Diplomacy is a word for men in suits, sitting in rooms I will never see, making decisions that land on my doorstep in the form of a heavy metal cylinder that may or may not arrive.
The tea stall on the corner opened today for the first time in five days. The owner, a man named Ramesh who has been there for twenty years, managed to get one small cylinder, just enough to serve chai for a few hours. The line stretched down the street. Men in shirts and women in saris, office workers and laborers, all standing together in the March sun, waiting for a small cup of warmth. When I passed by, Ramesh caught my eye and nodded.
We are all waiting. Waiting for cylinders, waiting for prices to drop, waiting for peace in places we cannot locate on a map. But while we wait, we share. We bring food to the elderly neighbor. We boil extra water for the family downstairs. We stand in line together, strangers connected by the simple need for a hot cup of tea.
The minister says avenues are opening. I hope he is right. I hope the ships start moving, the straits open, the prices fall. But more than that, I hope that when the next crisis comes—and it will, because crises always come—we remember this moment. We remember that a country is not just its infrastructure and its reserves and its diplomatic negotiations. A country is a million kitchens, a million mothers, a million small flames flickering in the dark, each one a prayer for tomorrow.