In a tin-shed room in the Amtola area of Mirpur, there are a total of eight rooms accommodating eight families. The eight families share a single kitchen, which houses a gas stove with two burners.

The women of the eight families take turns cooking on that stove. However, the gas pressure is so low that finishing the cooking for just a single family takes hours. As a result, members of the next family have to wait right by the stove. Some are even failing to get a chance to cook at all.

Shirin Begum was sitting and cooking in that kitchen at around 12:30pm today, on Thursday. She had started cooking around 11:00am and even after an hour and a half, a single dish was not yet finished. In one pot on the stove, she was simmering small fish and in another, she was heating water. Once that water boiled, she would add rice to cook it.