The graduation ceremony was on Friday, the 13th

Yes, Friday the 13th. This story is not about that day alone though but everything that led to it. My wife, Tejaswini, was to get her degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on Friday, the 13th day of May in 2011 AD. Her mother had traveled a million miles to be here for the day and her sister, Madhuvanti, and Madhuvanti's fiancee (Niranjan) were traveling from Purdue to attend the ceremony.

The plan was for Teju and her mom to get to Maryland (from New York) on the 11th (wed) for my birthday. Madhuvanti and Niranjan were to get there later that day. We would then drive to Massachusetts for the graduation after I got off work on Thursday. Friday, after the graduation we would drive to NY and on Saturday Madhuvanti would leave to the Netherlands for an internship and Niranjan would return to Purdue.

The 11th of May arrived and my wife and mother-in-law traveled 7 hours to get to MD. We celebrated my birthday with a friend and his wife and then we left to pick up the Hoosiers from the airport. As we were leaving for the airport at 11pm, we were locked in the apartment building as the door knob was broken. We opened the door by sliding a credit card through it and called up the emergency contact number for the apartment and told them to fix the door or else we would not be able to get in. We propped the door open and left. A couple of hours later, when we got back, the door was still broke. The credit card trick could not work from the outside. We called up the apartment complex again and 20 mins later, the maintenance guy called and asked if we were still stuck.. duh! Then he went on to ask if we had pinged our neighbors.. knowing well that it was past midnight. When we told him that we could not wake up people, his comment was - "Well, you woke me up"! Dude, you are being paid for this! He arrived 20 mins later, tried to open up the door, failed and rang all the buzzers shouting "Maintenance, open the door" to all who responded. The surprising part was he was shocked when no one buzzed him in. We finally got into bed at about 2 that night and I woke up early next day and reached work at 6:30 am.

At about 3:30 pm, we began the long (7-8 hr) drive to Amherst. As we entered NY, Teju took the car from me. The night then got livelier as we hit traffic on I-84 in Connecticut. 15 mins later as Teju put her foot on the accelerator, there was a puff of smoke from the hood...........to be continued in part 2 of this thrilling 3 part blog