I’m often asked why I prefer to rent rather than buy (especially in these times when the real estate market is low) and I always find myself making up mealy-mouthed excuses. But the truth is it’s because I like the freedom of renting. I like the fact that we can get up and move any time we want. An empty house is like a blank canvas. The possibility it contains is hugely exciting.
I like moving house so much that I get envious when someone walks into an empty apartment in a movie. In Love Aaj Kal, Deepika Padukone walks into an empty apartment. It’s a sad moment. She’s been through some hellish realizations and now she’s alone. Of course I empathized but a little voice at the back of my head was saying ‘oh but look at all that white space waiting to be filled up!’
Frustrated gypsy blood. Some deep-seated neurosis. Probably both.
More seriously, I think the desire for displacement can be a strong one and we’re usually so busy talking about the desire for stability that we forget about our need for its opposite. In Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, Sabina represented this spectacularly: “Betrayal. From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offense imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking ranks. Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.”
With age (or is it the social boxes we willingly climb into), it gets harder and harder to go off into the unknown. One keeps shearing out the possibilities until one is left with the chiseled bone of one’s life, stripped down to its last choices, it’s essentials. What one can live with. What one can’t live without.
We chain ourselves to things, people, places.
It’s so liberating to shake that up once in a while. One can’t always shake it up magnificently, definitively. But one can at least move in wider and wider circles within the bounds, prevent atrophy.
I’m also always asked ‘but you loved this house so much…’ which is telling of our attitudes to moving on from one thing to another. There is the assumption that if you love something, you can’t love something else more. Or you didn’t love it enough in the first place. Staying fixed in the same place means you’re committed and commitment is the bedrock of our social structures. There is a demand that we should love the same thing, always, in the same way. It makes people insecure when someone flouts this principle of fixedness.
My answer is: ‘Of course, I did. But now I love the other one.’ The other day, even A (who understands me better than any dead or living person) accused me of a complete lack of sentimentality. I say ‘accused’ but actually he just pointed it out. In any case, lack of sentimentality is a good thing in a writer so I can’t say I’m unhappy. It’s been six years since my father died, six and a half since my first dog, and 13 since my grandfather. I haven’t stopped missing any of them. If there was a fire in the house, the first thing I’d try to save (thing as opposed to living beings) are my photo albums. But no, I don’t mourn things that have served their time well. I just accept they’ve run out of energy. And I move.
Anyway, this is to announce that we’re moving house later this month. I will be carrying heavy stuff around but will be feeling lightness. Wish me luck!