Reading the Sui Northern Gas Company's schedule of piped gas supply for domestic users from December to February in three time slots — 5.30 am to 8.30 am, 11.30 am to 1.30 pm and 5.30 pm to 8.30 pm — women have started reordering their household chores to these eight hours each day to run their homes smoothly. A woman laments that such schedules must be abided by like a school's timetable.

Failing to follow the schedule, women must bear the brunt of the coldness and sourness of relationships, reflecting the cold outside. A home is an ecosystem comprising biotic (humans) and abiotic (gas, electricity, water) factors: the absence of any factor disturbs the ecological equilibrium.

The irony is that the piped gas itself doesn't follow its own schedule, as it comes late and leaves earlier than its schedule. The low pressure compounds the ordeal, particularly of women. On a lighter note, women pun on the descriptor 'Sui' as 'sooii', an Urdu word translated as a needle: the piped gas that seems to be coming as if from the eye of a needle is called........

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