the last day of any lease

By the end of the last day the flat looks like a concept rather than a place. The marks on the wall where you hung the picture, the slightly lighter rectangle on the floor where the bookshelf stood. It smells different already — not worse, just emptier. Whatever smell a place builds up from your cooking and your books and you being there: it starts to dissipate before you've even left. I have moved four times in Delhi. Each time the last day produces the same strange feeling. A grief that's also a relief, mixed together in a ratio you can't determine. You do a walk-through with the landlord or without. You hand back the keys, usually with some negotiation about the deposit. You take the last bag down. You stand on the street and look up at the window for a moment — everyone does this, I've seen other people doing it — and then you get in the auto. The new place is never ready. There are always things to figure out. But there's also the brief window where nothing is familiar and you don't know the quirks yet — which switch does what, where the morning light falls, which neighbor will ring your bell at inconvenient times — and in that window you get to be, for a little while, just a person in a new place. Uncommitted. Unburdened by the specific weight of your own habits. I like that window. I've moved four times partly to have it again.