“Where are you?” I ask a friend.
“I am inside a bus. I will be there in about a minute.”
I wait.
Ten minutes go by and still I see no signs of him. After fifteen minutes he shows up.
“You are.”
“Nepali Time,” he replies as if it were a reason that requires no explanation. He could have said he was stuck in a traffic jam. But no, with a touch of arrogance he uttered the two words that have come to become a way of life here.
**
The last time I was at a government office, I was told to be present at 10 a.m. sharp the next day. Remembering the wise words of a teacher: “to be on time one must be ahead of time.”
But the person, a ‘public servant’, showed up at 11:30. I demanded an explanation. His answer was: “This is Nepal, and the time is Nepal.”
“What is the Nepali Time?” I asked.
“Showing up late and making people wait..” he smirked.
It seems that we have lost our bearings on time. Every thing these days happens behind schedule. The city traffic system is such that a minor accident triggers a valley-wide disruption. The public transport system is so lazy that no one can predict how much time is enough for traveling a certain distance.
The Nepali time has made waiting a part of our life. We need to wait to pay our water bills; we need to wait to pay our taxes. Just because the people we pay to do their job do not show up on time. At public meetings, especially one with a politician participant has a 1% probability that it will start on time.
The “representatives of the people” have a notion that showing up late stamps their authority over
the commoners. Similar is the case in the non governmental sector.
College teachers, popularly known as ‘motorcycle teachers’, never show up on time. The ISP technician shows up a week after your connection is down.
These incidents leave me wondering: When will the day come when Nepali Time will be equal to the real time shown by the clock? When will the people learn to value time? When will the time come when we will be able to take pride in the accuracy of the Nepali time.
It is time that we stop making lame excuses for not being on time. It is time that we start valuing other people’s time as well.
