When the lady behind me in the queue at the Mumbai airport chided me for letting the wheels of my travel bag slide diagonally, with a ‘you could cause an accident with that’, I promptly straightened the bag to keep all the four wheels grounded. It had been a long wait, with passengers shuffling through the maze of queue barriers at the immigration section. 

Pulling hand luggage with all wheels down requires considerable dexterity – arms mostly. Unless you are of a distinguished height, the extendable handle typically reaches to the hips. In my case, at least. This can make manoeuvring the bag with all four wheels on the ground a constricting exercise for the elbow. The bent elbow, showing off a capital L, can start to feel achy after just a couple of minutes.

You will want to flex your arm to give it a breather at regular intervals or, like I do, let the bag slide diagonally to give the elbow a chance to straighten and relax.

So, there I was, waiting for my turn to advance to the next spot, when the lady behind uttered the dreaded ‘excuse me’ with a tone that had all the tinges of ire and scorn, and patronising to boot.

I turned round to check if that was directed to me, and looked right into the eyes of this stranger who appeared angry by all counts of human emotions. She must have worked up that emotion over the winding queue barrier. Or perhaps, she is someone who can muster up such strong emotions in a flash. Whatever!

The crust of the issue is this: This lady strongly believed that the way I was holding my bag could cause an accident. Make her trip, I mean. 

‘You cannot drag your bag that way. I could have tripped on it. Don’t you know how dangerous it could be?’

I replaced my ‘duh’ look with a verbal ‘sorry’, immediately straightening the travel bag to make it stand erect on its fours.

But that didn’t seem to quell her anger. ‘It is common sense,’ she said, a little too loudly, giving the bored lot at the queue something to mull over.

I turned towards her, tried my damnedest to look contemptuous; hoped it worked as I had no rejoinder to that ‘common sense’ pronouncement. 

Minutes later, I had at least a dozen quirky ones running through my mind – from ‘shucks, I only have uncommon sense’ to ‘I hate anything ‘common’.

Perhaps, I will use them the next time.