The sheer thrill my dad experiences by visiting a ‘subzi mandi’ (vegetable market) was something I never related to. Coming from a family where the ‘family car’ is a ‘lifetime’ asset, when the king size bed is made out of hand polished pure teak wood, where the sofa colour has to match the curtain’s and shall always be camouflaged under matching sofa covers in order to avoid a speck of dust on the ever so sparingly used arm rests, where we bought an LED from Mustafa mall and carried it a 1000 miles to save a few thousand bucks (only to be caught by Customs at the airport), where every single article is to be preserved for eternity – not because your emotions are attached to them , but because they reflect the hard earned and saved money of my parents, because a scratch on the dining table glass was a reason good enough to scold, because a dent on the family car was as a reason good enough for grief, because assets owned were invaluable.
Lets cut down to the present. Living in a metro city, having a family of my own(my wife and I), changing houses at will, where groceries and vegetables are ordered via the app which accepts the highest discount coupon, when I do not even know if a ‘subzi mandi’ exists. A family where we rent a different bike for every weekend road trip, in fact now my wife travels to office on a rented scooter. Where we ordered a queen size bed on rent and then upgraded to king size in three months ( don’t bother to know why 😉 ), where my sofa is in contrast with my curtains, where my TV went from HD ready to full HD to Smart to Ultra Smart in a span of a year – conveniently so because I own none, where maintenance of my wife’s scooter is not on me ( thank heavens), where I change my house look as and when i get a new push notification of a new product launch by a rental company.
A family where a scratch is a mere scratch, a dent a dent, where assets do not depreciate, for everything that does – I rent.
Comparing these two family versions – from Papa kehte hain beta rent karega? to Papa kehte hain beta rent kyu nahi kar leta?
The conclusion :- Coming off age – Rent is the new sexy.
Rent the tangibles. Experience everything else.