It’s been years since load shedding at our homes, schools, and work places has been in effect. It’s an invited guest. It comes and goes twice a day and based on a schedule; it comes when the “Nepal Load Shedding Schedule” says it will come, and goes when it says it will. We spend seconds that seem like years watching the clock tick and tick and tick again until the time comes when we have electricity. The problem is even more agitating when both your phone and your laptop are out of charge.

We like to have tube lights in our homes and work places because they give us light. We like to watch TV, charge phones and laptops, and most importantly use the internet. Internet comes with electricity and goes with electricity. Our mobile data comes when there is no electricity and goes when there is electricity.

The lights of our lives are in batteries and inverters and generators when there is no electricity, or we use candles.

We could use the sunlight to give us light, but then we would have to … go outside. And no, we rarely want that.

As written earlier, load shedding has existed for many years, and has had problems for many years, so much that we do not even mind it as much as we used to It is just load shedding, after all. We don’t need electricity for the whole day, every day. We don’t? Of course we don’t. It’s fine. Load shedding has been around for quite some time now; it can stay and make itself comfortable. We’ll just do what we’re best at anyway--adjusting. We will just manage our day accordingly, never mind if it’s an inconvenience, and a major one at that - we can deal with anything.

So we will wait and wait and wait a little more. We will remember to charge our phones and laptops and inverters and batteries, stock up candles and matchsticks and even diesel for the generators, and just wait for the light to come.