My name is Mahira Kakkar. I'm a third-year drama major at the School. I'm from Calcutta in India. I love this city—somebody once said that if you put the rickshaws in New York, it would be like Calcutta. When people ask me where I live, I say: the Upper West Side, Lincoln Center—that's my 'hood!

I say this so you know who I am.

You may not think I have a right to speak today; I am, after all, a foreigner. However, chaos theory... a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the world, the ripples spread, and a typhoon occurs in a different part of the world. This thing that happened, happened to the world—happened to us—happened to me. We all belong to generations marked by terror. And my question to you and to myself—mostly always to myself is—what do we do about it; what are we doing about it? I can make a plea for human contact and kindness, but kindness comes with experience and wisdom and pain—sometimes intense pain.

I am not here to mouth platitudes or speak profoundly. I am by choice an agnostic—non-religious. I don't believe in psychobabble and I try not to indulge myself. Sometimes I believe that the only answer is human endeavor, the ability to pick one's face off the floor and carry on despite the daily tragedies we deal with. Other times it's laughter. I don't know; there are no easy answers. For me there is only life and the value I place in it and on it.

I have been asked to speak about my personal experience regarding 9/11. How do I do that? It was a shared experience that blasted me open in ways that I did not expect and still cannot wholly comprehend. What I do know is that we are, you and I, trying to reach out, and in that reaching out there is immense potential.

My perspective is probably shaped by my upbringing in a country where buses blow up frequently, religious riots occur, basic amenities are not in place, education is scarce and life is just plain hard. These things are facts. I don't state them to negate your lives, deny your pain, or set myself apart. This is my life, and because we have faced a common trial, I share it with you.

And one day maybe when we have scattered to different parts of the globe and some other events shape the world, I will be saying that those people who seem so far away, so remote, so alien, they and I, we were young together, and we changed-together.

Thank you.

—Mahira Kakkar, drama student