Around 8 pm on March 8, far, far away from the battle raging in West Asia, a simmering tension came to an abrupt halt. The dal stopped bubbling.“Arrey, gas khatam ho gaya,” Ashima Begum recalls calling out to her husband, Maqsood, from her makeshift kitchen in the common area that she shares with her neighbours.That day, Ashima, who lives in Morna village in Noida’s Sector 35 and works as a cook in homes nearby, had returned home late from her evening shift. The family had been waiting for her to come to break their roza.She stood there for a few minutes as her mind raced: “Ab kya karoon (What do I do now)? Maqsood and the kids haven’t eaten anything since their suhoor (pre-dawn meal) of roti, sabzi and fruits.” Neither had she. When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)Maqsood, she says, looked annoyed. So she simply took the pot of half-cooked dal over to her neighbour, Aliya, and cooked it there.“This has happened before – the gas always runs out when we least expect it to. But we usually call the agent and get a cylinder almost immediately. This time, we have been without gas for almost a month,” she says.With Iran shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, the key transit route for oil and gas out of the Middle East, the ripples were felt almost immediately in India – restaurants ran out of fuel and people complained of long waiting lines for LPG.Story continues below this ad1/62/63/6Ashima with her youngest child. The family lives in a one-rooom house in a half-constructed building in Noida.4/65/6Ashima with her youngest child. Originally from Kanpur, Ashima and her husband moved from Hardoi to Delhi around two decades ago. (Express photo by Tashi Tobgyal6/6When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express photo by Tashi TobgyalIndia has around 33 crore household connections of LPG and the government has prioritised these supplies over commercial and industrial consumers.With the scarcity came reports of hoarding and blackmarketing, leading to authorities in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Raipur, and elsewhere carrying out raids and seizures. The government has increased the waiting period for a cylinder refill from 21 days to 25 in urban areas and 45 in rural areas, but the wait often extends much beyond this. The worst hit are migrants, students, domestic helps, those running small kitchens at home, and those outside the formal LPG network.So in homes like Ashima’s, the disruption was swift.Originally from Kanpur, Ashima moved to Hardoi around 20 years ago, when she married Maqsood, a daily wager. A few years later, after Maqsood developed a lung condition that made it difficult for him to do manual labour, the couple moved to Delhi. “In villages, all the jobs involve hard, physical labour. So we moved to Delhi when my eldest was a few years old,” says the 45-year-old. As Maqsood looked for jobs, Ashima earned by working in homes as a cook and cleaner, bringing up their five children – two teen daughters and a son who is now six years old.Story continues below this ad When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)Ashima’s house lies at the far end of a narrow lane, squeezed tighter by the open drains running on either side. Children run barefoot shouting with glee, e-rickshaws and scooters brush past the walls as dogs chase them, and a thin, weak ray of sunlight filters through the thousands of tangled loops of wire hanging above.Her one-room house is part of a half-constructed building. She shares a common area – crowded with buckets of water, boxes of spices, and her now defunct gas stove – with four other rooms. During the day, the women gather here, talking as they cook, wash clothes, and scrub utensils. In a far corner lies a heap of construction waste.For Ashima and her neighbours, registering for a formal gas connection is a distant dream. Maqsood says he has tried to register for a gas connection earlier but always found himself a few documents short.“When we took this house on rent, we didn’t sign any papers, and the electricity bill is in our landlord’s name. All our documents have our Hardoi address, so we had no residence proof. I only have an Aadhaar, but they said the numbers on them were illegible. My card would always be in my front pocket, catching sweat and dust, maybe that’s why,” he says.Story continues below this adIn the end, says Maqsood, getting all the documents was so complicated and tiresome that he gave up and decided to buy LPG cylinders in the black market. When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)He says they usually buy a 14-kg cylinder for Rs 1,000-1,500 from the local black-market LPG supplier. But with the recent tightening of rules, even the black-market has taken a hit.The day they ran out of gas, Maqsood called his LPG supplier, who told him the demand was so high that there was “no chance” he would get a cylinder that day. “The next day he called me and gave me two options. I could either buy a full 14-kg cylinder for Rs 4,000 or take a half-full cylinder for Rs 2,000. Can you believe it? Rs 4,000 for a cylinder. I usually get mine for Rs 1,000 and it lasts us at least a month. I even went to the gas agency to enquire if I can apply for a new gas connection, but they said no, not now,” he says.The LPG supplier, from whom Maqsood usually buys in black, says his business has taken a hit. “Earlier we would buy cylinders from the agency workers at the godown…after March 7, the agency workers said they can’t risk their jobs selling to me. A few days later, the police raided my stash of cylinders,” he says, adding that with fewer black-market suppliers, rates within the shadow economy have risen exponentially.Story continues below this adFor the next few days after they ran out of gas, the family subsisted on the community meals provided by the local mosque for Ramzan. But the mosque was around 3 km away and Ashima couldn’t have walked the distance everyday. She had to find a way. So she picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha (stove) out of it, managing to cut a semi-circle at the base of the tin. She then collected some twigs and dried branches from a park near her workplace, fished out pieces of paper and plastic from the construction dump in their building, shoved some of it into her tin chulha and got it working. When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)But the chulha is too small to cook anything elaborate. She recalls how the family had to celebrate Eid a few days ago with a small bowl of seviyan shared between the five of them. “I couldn’t even make dahi-bhalla or biryani for the children,” says Ashima.As Ashima sits outside her room, throwing chillies, garlic and onions into the sizzling oil, her neighbour Kusma walks in. “Didi, cylinder mila (Did you get a cylinder?)” she asks. Ashima laughs, “Can’t you see how I am cooking? Ek mahina hone ko hai (It’s been nearly a month without a cylinder).”“What do I say, didi,” moans Kusma. “I went to the market today. They are asking for Rs 400-500 to fill one kg gas. Ek ne bola, lena ho toh lo nahi toh niklo (One of them said, take it or leave),” she says.Story continues below this adKusma says that “before the lockdown”, her name was on the beneficiary list for the Ujjwala Yojana scheme. “Everyone here said I was lucky when I was selected for Ujjwala. But then, the gas agency that was supposed to give us the free cylinder shut down. I never got one,” she claims.From the common area of the building, Ashima’s neighbour Shanti peeps into her room. Holding her “kitab”, her LPG customer card, she says, “I stood in line around 2.30 at night and got a gas cylinder the next morning at 9,” she says.A few metres away from Ashima’s house, outside the village school, a long queue winds along the boundary walls. A line of at least 100 empty cylinders, chained up together stands nearby. People amble around the cylinders, some sit atop them and a few lie down on mats beside them. With the sun almost set, one unfolds a mosquito net and begins putting it up.A few paces away, Rita says she has been standing in the queue since 7:30 pm the previous day. It has been over 20 hours since she first set her empty cylinder down at the end of the line. Her 17-year-old son runs up to her and tells her to go home. “Today the truck with the cylinders came and it got over just before it was my turn. The gas agency person told me to come tomorrow,” says Rita. But there is no way she can leave the queue. “If you leave your spot for even a second, someone will drag your cylinder to the back of the line,” she says.Story continues below this ad When she ran out of LPG, Ashima picked up a discarded, beaten-up oil can and improvised a chulha out of it. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)A local gas agent explains that the demand spiked due to panic. “After the government said that cylinders can be refilled only after 25 days, people began to panic a little and the demand went up. Not every household needs a cylinder every month. But now that everyone is lining up for a refill, there are delays,” he says.A thick black drain separates the manicured parks and airy apartment buildings where Ashima works from her chaotic neighbourhood in Morna.Around 6 pm, Ashima leaves for her evening shift – she has to cook dinner at two homes. During the short walk, Ashima talks about her younger daughter’s wedding that’s scheduled to be held at their village in Hardoi late April. “I am so relieved the wedding is in our village. There’s no tension about gas there…everything is cooked on big chulhas, and the rotis in the tandoor. We’ll have to feed at least 100 people,” she says.As Ashima crosses the bridge over the nala, the first sign of the fuel divide comes into view – yellow lines that climb up the walls of the buildings, carrying PNG (Piped Natural Gas) into homes. “The rich have it nice. They don’t have to worry about empty cylinders,” sighs Ashima. “The thought of going back home and lighting the chulha… My daughters have never used a firewood chulha; so now, they don’t even help me with the cooking,” she says.Story continues below this adAt the first home, Ashima walks in with ease. “Kya banaoon, didi (What do I cook?),” she says, walking straight into the kitchen.As she cooks some sabudana khichdi and fries some papad, the woman of the house (a government employee who didn’t want to be identified) says, “We have pipelines, so we have no problems.” Her husband, who has just returned from work, says, “It’s strange how this war is going. When Trump said there would be a five-day pause, my stocks rose…then when Iran said they never spoke to Trump, my stocks crashed. In the end, it will be the common people who pay for this war.”An hour later, Ashima is at the second home, where she is asked to make pooris, boil some sweet potatoes and roast some makhana. “I thought there would be a proper shortage by now,” says the house owner. “But things seem okay. It may take some time, but people are getting cylinders, aren’t they? They’ll manage. Anyway, you can always buy one in black.”Around 8 pm, by the time she wraps up her work, the crowd has thinned on the road outside and the street lights do little to light up the dark corners. “Don’t worry, I am used to this… Anyway, our area is always full of people,” she laughs, heading towards the nala that’ll take her to the other side, where her home and the chulha await.Ujwala Santosh Kute, 40, MumbaiUjwala runs a chapati business in Ghatkopar with a friend. Until recently, they would supply up to 2,000 chapatis a day to canteens, tiffin services and hospitals. About 10 days ago, her cylinder ran out, and with no refill in sight, the business came to a halt.For now, she is taking on a single order from a hospital that has provided her with a cylinder. “I make about 400 chapatis for them,” she says. Beyond that, there’s little she can do. “It’s like Covid, there’s nothing anybody can do. Thankfully, my daughter and husband work, so we can manage for now.”Then, she asks: “Can you arrange a cylinder?”– Heena KhandelwalHari Pal, 27, SuratHari Pal plans to go home to Gaya, Bihar, with his wife and five-year-old son on April 5, two days after he gets his salary on April 3. “I had no plans to go home, but the LPG crisis is making it difficult for me to stay,” says Pal, who does not have a gas connection and usually buys his LPG cylinder in black. “Earlier, we would get an LPG cylinder refilled for Rs 100, but now, the LPG supplier is asking for Rs 600. When we asked for a second refill, they refused,” says Pal, from his home in the Ganeshnagar migrant labour colony at Pandesara in Surat. “My wife now cooks on this stove,” he says, pointing to a metal bucket that his wife Seema has turned into a coal-fired chulha.— Kamaal SaiyedSaroja KM, 53, BengaluruA clerk at an aided school, Saroja has been anxious about her cylinder running out of gas. She has made a couple of visits to her LPG supplier, asking for her spare cylinder to be refilled. “When I tried booking in the first week of March, the agency told that they are not taking any bookings. I finally booked on March 16 and made the payment online. But so far, I have not got the cylinder,” says Saroja, who runs a family of four. Her visits to the agency, 8 km from home, haven’t been pleasant. “The last time I went, an employee rudely told me to take my family to the restaurant if we run out of gas. I got into a fight,” she says. “The cylinder may run out of gas any moment, within 2-3 days.”— Kiran Parashar