When the Flame Flickers

 

When the Flame Flickers

This blog started exactly there. A news headline - no, multiple news snippets. Textile and yarn industry impacted. Welding and forging units worried about gas shortage. City boosting wet waste processing to generate bio-gas. CEO of a major airline talking about fuel cost hike affecting air travel. Seemed random. Something about LPG shortages. Numbers. Imports. Policies. But the pandemic had taught me something. Ripples take time. An earthquake somewhere means a tsunami somewhere else. So I started taking notice. The kind of things that always felt unimportant to me… and not immediately personal. 

Until, today, it quietly became personal. And again, just when my wife decided to take a short break. I think the kitchen sink is enjoying seeing Srini - The Down Under 2 - The Revenge. Do read What the Sink Saw earlier.

The flame in the kitchen felt just a little more precious. I did not want the LPG cylinder to get over. Not in a dramatic way. Nothing urgent. Just a small, almost polite reminder — use me well. Because a shortage is rarely just about what is missing. It is about how everything else slowly rearranges itself around what might soon not be there.

And that’s when the interesting part begins. 

The trip to the vegetable shop was the first sign - Vegetables seem to cost a little more. The neighbourhood ironing fellow gave a wry smile as he raised his rates by a rupee per piece. The favourite tiffin place round the corner has reduced one sabzi from the mini thali. As I tried to book a train ticket, I realised travel feels slightly more expensive than it did last month, though nothing looks very different on the surface.

There is no single change which is big enough to complain about. But together, they nudged me to think.

So I stopped and watched a little more closely. There is a certain kind of intelligence that begins to emerge in such times.

Cooking becomes a little more thoughtful. Not restrictive, just… deliberate. The pressure cooker whistles are counted more closely. Soaking dals feels less like a ritual handed down by elders and more like a clever little trick that saves time, effort, and yes—fuel. The first thing I did was to find out how I could do a single pot cooking using a pressure cooker. No deep fried stuff for me today.

Leftovers stop being leftovers. They have become planned continuations. Yesterday’s meal (which I had so lovingly cooked) found a second life with minor improvisation. Not out of compulsion, but out of a kind of newfound respect for what has already been made. Ok fine - saving gas too.

There is also a gentle return to simplicity.

Meals that do not demand too much. My laziness helps. Recipes that rely less on long cooking and more on fresh ingredients. The kind of food that always existed in earlier times, before we started making things more elaborate than necessary.

Outside the kitchen, other adjustments happen almost so naturally.

Short distances begin to feel walkable again. Not always, not everywhere—but often enough and the Electric Scooter gets more rides than the car. A quick mental calculation replaces an impulsive decision. Is this trip necessary? Can it wait? Can it combine with something else?

Expenses are not cut. I have started reconsidering them. There is a difference. The first one feels forced, the other ‘smartly’ chosen, even if I say so.

And the walk with my pet revealed something even subtler. An awkward awareness that many others are feeling this more deeply than me. The number of vehicles that bring the delivery persons to the gate has reduced. They are making fewer trips. The small gol guppa vendor adjusting the numbers slightly. The worker whose income depends on movement, volume, activity, all have slowed down just a bit.

It brings with it a certain thoughtful gentleness. A little more patience. Maybe a slightly larger tip is fine. An understanding has dawned that delays are not always  because of inefficiencies, they are probably due to circumstances.

As I sit back and write this, what is interesting is that none of this feels like hardship in the traditional sense. There is no dramatic shift in my lifestyle and no sudden deprivation. Just a series of minor recalibrations. I may have shifted to a car from a manual transmission to an automatic one but now it is like life is quietly moving from automatic mode to manual mode.

And perhaps that is the real story. Not the shortage itself but the way it reminds us, without announcement and without any instructions, that we already know how to adapt. We do not make big changes but small, almost invisible choices.

A little less waste.

A little more thought.

A little more awareness of what connects what.

Somewhere far away, bigger fires may be burning. But in many kitchens much closer home, the flames may simply be flickering.

Life is a great teacher. It does not teach in a traditional way. It just adjusts the flame… and waits to see if we notice.

Enough to pause and see how we are all connected.