There was a time when many of us in Nepal knew a timetable by heart. Not our school routine or office schedule, but the load-shedding schedule.
It hung on the walls of our homes and neighborhood shops. We folded it inside drawers, tucked it behind calendars and shared it with friends and family. We knew when the lights would go out, which areas would be affected and when the power would return. Homework, cooking and ironing school uniforms- everything had to be planned around those hours of darkness.
Electricity didn't simply power our homes then. It decided how we lived our lives.
Some of my childhood memories are lit not by bulbs but by candles.
My sister and I shared a room growing up, and exam nights often meant studying until dawn. One night, we kept a candle burning beside our books until morning. We woke up to black soot all over our faces and the curtains. We spent a good few minutes wondering what had happened before realizing the candle had been quietly smoking all night.
Jimmy Kimmel forgot to share Oscars news to family
Those were the days of load shedding.
The power outages affected even our smallest routines. I still remember going to school in my tracksuit one morning because my uniform couldn't be ironed before the electricity went out. We even found creative ways to watch our favorite television serials, connecting the television cable to a mobile phone with an antenna just to catch the broadcast.
Yet, despite all the inconvenience, there was an unexpected togetherness. When the television went blank, we gathered in one room. My sister had a habit of telling horror stories only when the lights went out, ensuring the darkness always felt a little darker. And whenever the electricity finally returned, the entire neighborhood came alive with one familiar cry:
"Batti aayo!"
The shout echoed from one house to another. Even before the lights in our own home flickered back on, we already knew power had returned because the whole neighborhood celebrated it together.
Somewhere along the way, that chorus disappeared.
So did the long white candles we once burned almost every evening. Today, similar candles are sold as decorative "aesthetic" pieces. Our bulky emergency light, once indispensable, now gathers dust in a forgotten corner. They remind me how quickly necessity becomes nostalgia.
Then, almost without noticing, I realized I could no longer remember the load-shedding schedule- not because I had forgotten it, but because I no longer needed it.
Reliable electricity had quietly become ordinary.
Today, as a journalist, my work depends on the internet. I file stories at night, work on my laptop and charge my devices without a worry. It is only when I think back on those nights lit by candles that I see how much has changed.
Today, conversations about Nepal's energy future often revolve around how much power we can generate, building transmission lines, investment and energy exports. Those conversations are important. But behind every megawatt are ordinary things: a student preparing for an exam without soot settling on her books, a family finishing dinner without rushing against the clock, a journalist meeting a deadline without wondering whether the internet will disappear, and a child who will never have to memorize a schedule for darkness.
Perhaps that is the greatest measure of progress. Not that the lights came back, but that they quietly stopped being something we had to think about.
The day we forgot the load-shedding schedule, Nepal had already begun writing a new story.
