I have often wondered what the worst part of the one day weekend is for us working folks. Is it the fact that you wake up on Saturday morning, do a spot of laundry, eat brunch, watch a little TV and then, poof, there goes the weekend, almost as fast as it took Balkrishna Dhungel to get in and out of jail. Or is it the fact that no matter how much you rush, it’s impossible to set yourself up for the coming week vis-à-vis your laundry, groceries, and assorted chores on your ‘things to do’ list. Add to that our tendency to relegate all our meetings with relatives to the weekends and you wonder why we even bother having that one day weekend when nothing can really be accomplished during it.
The funny thing is that whenever you ask people ‘why’ they need that extra day i.e. Sunday, the answer inevitably is so that they can finish all their ‘official’ work. Not to rest and recuperate, mind you, but to pay their bills, taxes and run around to keep up with the mountain of paperwork that is needed to sustain life in urban Nepal. And in the hustle and bustle of urban living, with both husband and wife neck and neck in the rat race, who really has the time to spare to queue around or go shopping for groceries and other household items?
There are now a slew of service based organizations that cater to these long suffering urban dwellers – from Montessori centers to after school care homes, from bill (blue) book renewal services, online payment of electricity and water bills to delivery of fruits and vegetables. I can’t remember the last time I queued to pay my electricity or water bill and this weekend is going to be my last (fingers crossed) trip to the fruit and vegetable market because online deliveries apparently work. Unlike the previous generation, I don’t really feel the need to molest and grope my fruits and vegetables before I buy them.
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It’s astonishing to think of the amount of time we waste queuing around or running here and there to get the simplest of work done in this country right from vegetables to banking – all of which is so normal for people from a generation ago. It’s not so much about the time apparently (a lot of retired folks have a lot of time on their hands) but the experience factor too. If you haven’t stood in a queue for hours, been shoved around all over the place and faced bad customer service, then have you really paid your bill? Where is that sense of satisfaction? The experience apart, a lot of the skepticism of these newfangled services also stems from the trust issues that our parents and their generation have with online payments (a lot of people tend to distrust even ATMs) and the lack of physical give and take during the transactions leading to suspicions about quality.
But for us a lot of these tasks that usually clutter our things to do list can easily be done hassle free at the click of a mouse. Take, for example, the relatively simple task of renewing your bill book (blue book) and paying the tax due on it every year. It simply must be done on a working day, so you can either choose to take a day off and spend the entirety of it at the transport office running from pillar to post or pay someone a small fee to get this done for you.
Granted that this so called ‘service’ is simply a case of a tout having taken their business online, but it is still entrepreneurial and it works for both parties. And until the time our government simplifies the arcane procedures for these and other official payments, these ventures will continue to flourish. I’m not sure if you remember but at the height of the economic blockade, you could pay someone to stand in a petrol ‘queue’ for you so you could go about your daily business. In fact in places like China, professional queuing has now become a viable business.
I remember a colleague telling me that the downside of all this is that it costs money. Of course it costs money – it’s not charity! Even the vegetables that you go and physically buy from the market aren’t exactly cheap – your money feeds at least four different parties in the value chain – the shopkeeper, the middleman, the transporter (another middleman) and then the farmer. These services are a tradeoff between money (not exactly exorbitant) and convenience and, most of them, without naming any names have made my life infinitely easier.
There are, of course, those who scoff at these so called ‘millenial’ leanings but the only positive thing I can think of regarding our way of doing things currently is that it gives employment to so many people in the form of assistants, helpers, and messengers. And in a country struggling with employment issues, this is not really a bad thing. But until the time queuing to pay bills, running around to get official work done, laboring under the strain of household shopping, and generally wasting time serve any purpose, count me out.
The writer loves traveling, writing, and good food when he is afforded an escape from the rat race. He can be contacted at gunjan.u@gmail.com
