Deadweight
Most of the luggage was borne on shoulders and some of it wheeled out of the elevator. The cab was navigating off the track on the Uber app. The time lost in finding a cab had eaten into our buffer time. The nuisance of luggage was weighing heavily on my mind and shoulders. I was doing a mental check of my vitamin B12 and D3; the levels seemed not enough to care for an ailing wife and control a restive kid. Just three of us and at every point we halted, the bags were counted. While I was doing it a third time at the apartment gates, I heard hurried steps approaching us. They were two of them and they didn’t bother to look at us. Culturally, Indians gaze at strangers with a sense of entitlement. And, we were strangers with luggage. While crossing us, acknowledging the curious looks I was casting back at them, one of them gestured by a sign of hand under his throat and barely managed these words, “What they doing man?” The fracas was now audible in the direction they ran. Two second