My afternoon nap just after lunch was disturbed by the continuous ringing of the calling bell. I opened the door to find an awkwardly grinning gas cylinder delivery man standing at the gate. It was painful paying ₹929 for a cooking gas cylinder and an extra ₹ 21 to the delivery man as a delivery charge. I don't have another alternative to cooking. If I cannot buy a gas cylinder, my kitchen cannot operate and my children will sleep in hunger. As a mother, the thought of hungry children automatically pushed my hand to my purse, sliding ₹ 950 into the hands of the delivery man. Just two months before, I was paying 1029 rupees for the cylinder and ₹21 for the delivery charge. As a housewife, I feel a special happiness by getting a 100 discount on cooking fuel, it is more intense than when my husband says I love you.

When I was a child my mother used to cook in earthen chulhas with firewood as fuel in my ancestral village. It was fun to blow air into the chullhas through the hole of the iron pipe and see a flame coming out from chulha. The taste of Parathas on chulha is something eternal, the taste is still in my mouth corner. You will get a peculiar taste when food is cooked on earthen chulha with firewood.

Then we shifted to a small town where we were introduced to heaters. The wire was coiled on a ceramic plate. It was easier and more convenient than earthen chulha. You have to just switch on and food cooking starts, unlike the earthen chulhas which require at least half an hour of preparation before the cooking starts. At that time nobody was worried about the electric bill. As the heater was consuming lots of electricity every household had a special line for the heater which was not connected to the meter. This was normal at that time, even house owners used to advertise to the tenants that their house had a special free heater connection. The only irritating thing was breaking the heater coil and ceramic plate from time to time. The state electricity board was not bothering to manage power staling as it was taken as normal.

I remembered my father didn't bother to buy a plug also. We had a live wire hanging from the skylight, we used to connect the wire from the heater coil directly to the live wire just placing it over it. A little spark means cooking start. That make-shift arrangement worked for more than twenty years. Sometimes I wonder how not even a minor accident happened for twenty years. I as a school student could use it easily. We were fortunate enough. At that time gas stove was newly introduced and only the rich were using as. Gas was costlier than electricity. Electricity was almost free.

When the state electric board became regulated no free heater was allowed. Continuous checking and monitoring led people to shift to book gas cylinders.

I remember when our electricity bill came around ₹1800 my father went to book a gas cylinder.

I was like why I had to pay for this domestic fuel when I had been using it for a fee throughout my life? It was a shift from free fuel to 1st time-payment fuel. Till 1997 I remembered we were using a heater but as it became costlier we bought our 1st gas cylinder at ₹150.

When I started my kitchen gas cylinder was coming at a price ₹ 324. Within 15 years, it rises to ₹1029. A pinch in the pocket.

Why is it hurting? Because we have not been not paying anything for kitchen fuel now we have to pay ₹1029.

The system of subsidies I'm getting in each sector of life has made my mind capable of distinguishing between my rights as a citizen and my duty. I think the government is bound to provide me with everything necessary to live at a marginal cost. Subsidy has become my rights.

I wonder why the government started a subsidy program for various items at first. It is a wrong socialisation that led politicians to ensure subsidies in food clothing and other essential items It is human nature that if you get free anything you will want everything free. The government introducing freebies are actually making all generation “Karma Khordhi”, in our great culture all religious books have described Karma as Bhagavan but the political parties that force freebie just to get votes are instigating the basic human tendency ‘of eating without working’ thus helping to development of Karma Khordhi generations.

But as a housewife and as a mother I really want a minimum investment in fuel for cooking food for my children. A fuel that gives a clean environment, hygienic condition, and is easy to handle is a favorite among homemakers. LPG is widely accepted as it is clean, hygienic, and easy to handle. There are thousands of new methods such as biogas, or fuel by using domestic wastes but with no practical uses. The major failure is the use of solar energy in day-to-day life. Though the government is keen to promote the use of solar panels which can convert sunlight to electrical energy in various places there are many drawbacks to using them as a domestic fuel. First of all, the solar panel is very costly and it requires a very large space to get installed, second thing it requires five to six hours to cook food in solar cookers. In the area children are munching on two minutes Maggi what is the use of a solar cooker taking three hours to make the water warm?

Solar panel was invented in 1883 but effective use of it started in1954 by Bell lab. To date, many changes have been made in the original form but these techniques are not sufficient to make it useful as domestic fuel.

Scientific research is going on in different fields to develop adequate domestic fuel but no such significant research is there on solar panels. The solar cell uses silicon and lithium which are costly.

For the last hundreds of years, there has been no big development that can reduce the cost and other drawbacks of solar panels.

It is the best renewable energy that has not been utilized properly. 

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