December 20, 1981

How do you measure a triumph? In the theater, God may say one thing, while Mammon says another. A triumph is when they don't argue. ''Nicholas Nickleby,'' dear, sweet, rich, plummy, 8 1/2-hour ''Nicholas Nickleby'' (or ''Nick Nick,'' as the boys in its backroom call it) leaves the Plymouth Theater on Jan. 3. It is finished then, its odyssey over. Still, we have learned from it. The first thing we have learned is that people love it, that they talk about it, and that they will pay $100 for a ticket to see it. Give them a chance, in fact, and they will pay a good deal more. Observe the street outside the Plymouth before almost any performance. Who are those people accosting the ticket holders? They are buyers, or would-be buyers, trying to lay on money for tickets. The odd thing, however, is not that they are there (this kind of thing goes on all the time outside Madison Square Garden) but how infrequently they find someone who will sell them a ticket. The going price for ''Nicholas Nickleby'' among professional ticket brokers is $250; the going price on the street outside the Plymouth has never been established. Business is too slow. No one wants to sell. There is a story about a ticket being sold for $1,000, but it may only be a story. What is undeniable, however, is the passion to see ''Nicholas Nickleby.''

IT was a Saturday before Christmas, and all through the Computerland store here customers were busy testing functions and experimenting with games on a myriad of computers for sale. ''It's real neat,'' exclaimed 7-year-old Tanya Azzaro as she slid into a chair in front of one model and pressed her tiny fingers on the keyboard to play ''Donkeys,'' a demonstration game. At the rear of the store, Hans Trefny, a 15-year-old high-school sophomore, clutched an envelope bulging with the $1,300 he had saved from a part-time job with the Fairfield Public Library. He said he was going to put his earnings into a $3,000 computer that he had arranged with his parents, William, a retired school teacher, and Eycke, a physical therapist, to buy for Christmas as a joint venture.

Two days of fierce fighting in the Kandahar area between Afghan guerrillas and Soviet-backed Government forces ended on Nov. 28. The guerrillas said it had been the most severe fighting since they took up arms three years ago against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. Some said the Government forces had paid heavily, even though their own losses had been severe. For a traveler in the middle, it was hard to tell who, if anyone, had won. In this sense, the battle seemed symbolic of this costly, but inconclusive, struggle. For a band of 27 guerrillas, the battle had burst suddenly and unexpectedly. The day before, they returned from the border area near Pakistan to the site of the fighting - this village between Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, and the American-built airport now used as Soviet Air Force headquarters in Afghanistan.

NEWARK ALTHOUGH commuters are delighted by the news that NJ Transit, the state's mass-transit agency, will not increase fares on buses and trains again before next July, agency officials already have begun to worry about the bleak financial situation that seems certain to exist by then. At a meeting of the NJ Transit board of directors last Thursday, Jerome C. Premo, the agency's executive director, recommended that fares be held at their present level because recent Congressional budget actions had wiped out a $7 million deficit. ''The latest entry in our sweepstakes to close the budget gap is a provision that says that New Jersey will not have to pay back to Uncle Sam some $7 million in overpayments made by the Urban Mass Transit Administration,'' Mr. Premo said. The overpayments were made by U.M.T.A. between 1976 and 1978 to ease the takeover of the state's commuter rail lines by Conrail, the Federally subsidized railroad operator.

Reagan Administration officials want to relax or repeal many of the Federal rules that govern nursing home services, the rights of patients and the qualifications of the staff at long-term care facilities. Proposals being drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services would reduce Federal regulation of the industry at a time when many states have been forced to cut back on nursing home inspections because of a reduction in Federal money available for that purpose. The Federal Government pays state licensing agencies to inspect nursing homes that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which aid the aged and the poor. The homes must meet Federal health and safety standards to be eligible for Federal money under the programs.