KATHMANDU, JANUARY 16

Ah, traffic lights! They have such a tricky job: control and ensure a free flow of traffic at the city's boisterous intersections – life would be an ordeal if the countryside, or ridges of green hills around Kathmandu had such intersections too! – so that a rickshaw does not bump into a bicycle, which, in turn, would upset a greengrocer's apple cart, a rundown truck does not plow into a traffic island, or worse still, swarming bikes do not crash into each other and get the paramedic's ambulance stuck in the gridlock.

Traffic lights are so intrinsically related to human movements in city life, and it's as simple as this: a few seconds of red light and life seems to freeze eternally (people hate this!); still fewer seconds of orange and life seems to wake up brusquely from a slumber; yet again, a few seconds of green light and existence seems to spring back to life (people love it!).

This ambivalent love-andhate saga between 'humans and traffic lights' is so unambiguously visible in every city of the world, day and night.

Some commuters are, of course, intuitively grumpier than others when traffic lights turn red. They tend to bellyache consistently: the lights unfailingly go red when they are especially in a hurry. When they sleep in on – and that is not only on weekends – hours slip by on daydreaming: a sleek monorail – that our mayor recently gave up on! – taking them safely and swimmingly to just a stone's throw from their office; an unexpected salary raise that would pay for them a trip to the Altai mountains; a sudden disappearance of Omicron or 'appearance' of a Covid cure-all that would give them back a safer and happier world as in the pre-virus era!

Yes, hours slip by just like that, woolgathering! Now, a few stop-and-go moments, and all hell breaks loose!

Heard on the grapevine that the editor of the Times of India – the first English-language daily of the world and visibly enjoying the largest circulation – sleeps only when traffic lights go red. Now that the Internet is all-pervasive, a lot more happens when the traffic signal turns red: a procrastinating collegian on his wobbly scooter smiles at a politico's cartoon-nose that pops up on his screen, a laidback cabby with his 'nose on a screen' does not budge even as the light goes green, or a busy businesswoman manages to show the world – by sending a series of 'very important' SMSs while the light is still red – that she is, well, really 'busy'.

As such, no one seems to find the wait at stoplight irksome: it's no light years' wait, after all!

A version of this article appears in the print on January 17, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.