In 1982, Rajesh Joshi wrote an evocative Hindi short story titled Somvar (Monday) capturing the changing dynamics of a middle-class household with the arrival of liquefied petroleum gas.
As if narrating our current predicament, the story depicts how an entire global regime of petroleum and rising oil prices subtly translates into mounting tensions in one home.
“The world was fighting over oil,” Joshi wrote. “The nation was watching the flow of oil. And our home was heating up from the gas that came from that flow of oil.”
Somvar is a reminder that crises around oil and gas are not new. What is different, though, is the manner in which the spectacle of crisis is circulating – as social media images, posts and reels.
The current anxiety around liquefied petroleum gas in India – rising prices, delayed cylinder deliveries – evokes a historical moment when energy shortages became prominent in public consciousness: the oil shocks of the 1970s.
The modern cultural script of energy scarcity was forged during the 1973 oil crisis, when an embargo by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries led to a significant reduction in oil supplies and caused prices to soar.
A second shock followed in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution. These crises were economic events, but...
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