Delivered by her grand-daughter, Sareega Shetty '10, in her unavoidable absence.

Dear Principal Laurenson, Members of the Board, Distinguished Guests, Mr. Ben Lall, all the members of the faculty and staff: thank you for asking me to be here today to share this important step in the lives of the graduating class of 2011. I speak to you all, you lucky students of Woodstock School who have chosen to make Woodstock their Alma Mater, their 'generous mother' to guide them in their learning and the formation of their characters and personalities, and specially, the class of 2011 for whom I am here today to wish Godspeed in your lives, and to say with Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and in the words of T.S. Eliot, 'fare forward travelers'.

As many of you must know I am an actor, an artist, an entertainer, a person who makes you laugh and cry, to make you, the audience, aware of the meaning and the value of your existence.

I am an artist who follows the path of Indian classicism, an outlook not conditioned or restrained by religion or any other sectarian consideration, but by a sense of the beauty of totality, that which is both manifest—creation, and that which is formless—unknowable, not perceivable by our five senses (or their extensions, like microscopes and telescopes), but nonetheless there, and also present in each one of us. Which does not mean that God, and we, do not laugh. 'For God's sake, God, are you God or aren't you God?' a character in one of my husband, Gopal Sharman's films, asks.

We both began our grown up lives as journalists in Delhi, though Gopal had trained to be a classical singer and I had enjoyed and excelled at theatre in school and University. We met as journalists. A couple of years later (we were married by then) A fairy tale took over our lives!

Gopal was editing Sunday edition of the Indian Express newspaper, the Sunday Standard,. Every week end he wrote a piece for the paper under the pseudonym Nachiketas, a character from the Upanishads. It was either a story or a poem and I thought they were very beautiful. I was in love of course, which you might say could have influenced my judgment. One day a search was instituted for Gopal by the renownend scholar and intellectual and President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan. He had recently had a cataract operation which had made him miss several Nachiketas pieces and he wanted the poet to come to Rashtrapati Bhavan and read them aloud to him. Gopal asked me to read his pieces aloud because he said I was a better reader. The President and his distinguished guests listened with rapt attention. Every now and then the President would stop me to explain to his guests how beautifully Gopal had used a difficult philosophical idea expressed in this or that Upanishad. They loved it all. Dr. Radhakrishnan said to me, you can't just do this for us. The writing is so beautiful and modern and young, and yet based in our traditional thought! Many, many people should hear this. I have to tell you that the President was amazed to find that Gopal was young, North Indian, wore slacks and a turtle-necked tee and moved around the city on a bicycle, with a little Hermes typewriter.

A few days later, the President arranged for us to perform at the Azad Bhavan auditorium in Delhi on Friday the 13th of January.

We called our show 'Full Circle', Gopal's poems and stories recited by me, and songs sung by Gopal. And here is the Fairy Tale bit. To the performance came not only the critics who wrote fulsome praise in their reviews the next day, but also several Ambassadors and we were invited to bring 'Full Circle to Rome, Belgrade, Zagreb and Lubljiana!

So we set forth to conquer the world or at least Europe with our stories and poems and songs. And so we did! Rome, Belgrade, Zagreb, Lubljiana led to the Vatican, Munich, Frankfurt, Brussels, London! Rave reviews, front page pictures, full houses, proper theatres and television programmes too!

The Fairy Tale happened for two unknown young Indians. We earned enough money to buy ourselves a shiny black VW Beetle and travelled through Europe soaking in the delights: Florence, the Alps, a Wagnerian opera in Munich, La Boheme in Zagreb, a musical in Lubljianaa, Brecht play in Frankfurt, performing at the Theater Poeme in Brussels. The Writers Club in Belgrade, Spumanti wine, Rhine wine, dancing and drinking all night while men at nearby tables toasted me by smashing their glasses on the floor and calling out 'La Bella Indiene'. Most wonderful of all: performing, performing, people listening to Gopal's words. Communicating a sense of beauty, willy nilly a sense of India and Gopal's beautiful voice making me cry real tears as he sang the Kabuliwala's Ae Mere Pyare Watan song and as we ended with Iqbal's Sare Jahan se Accha, Hindustan Hamara.

And this brings me to something I have been told about, that in the Class of 2011, there are quite a few of you who are thinking seriously about taking up one of the arts as a profession.

The arts, whether painting, sculpting; film, television, photography; acting, directing; dancing, choreography; music, classical, instrumental or vocal, Indian or Western; or rock and metal, pottery, laser shows, installation art whatever—the arts all have several most important things in common.

To practice an art you have to learn the craft of it. The craft often means a great deal of drudgery, like learning lines, for instance, or practicing scales. Hours and hours of work. No cheering audience, just hard, lonely work. If you don't have the craft you do not have the means to communicate what burns inside you to be told. If you don't have a passion that burns inside you to communicate something most dear, most true to you, forget it.

Most people are happiest with the security of a regular job, the assured income, the well worn path upwards, the well earned retirement, the annual increment, the annual vacation. Yes, there is stress here too, fierce competition, office or business politics, family entanglements. But it is the better path for most of us, and not to be derided. Then too, each life has its opportunity for a moment of bravery, of true sacrifice, of true love, of the elation of having made the right, the dharmic choice.

But the artist's life is truly different. It's like balancing on the highwire with no safety net, and the ground below is littered with those who fell off. Not just in the case of financial security of which there is none, but in the case of a misjudgment, an over estimation of one's own talent. That talent has to have a spine of great integrity, an insight, an instinct for what is true and good and beautiful—Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. One cannot exist without the other. Art, when it is great, is like a mystical experience. An experience of harmony and joy, a fleeting glimpse of divinity.

Because it is the divinity in great art that touches the divine in each one of us with whom it communicates. But it is a long, long road, a long, long quest to get there.

Are you prepared for all this unknown? You who are just eighteen and dew beaded fresh in your hair?

Maybe some of you are. If you are lucky you will have a good arts school to carry you a little further on. Even if you do not find one you will still be an artist if it is inside you. I told you about a fairy tale start to Gopal and my lives. We are blessed to have had, to still have each other. Not that we have not experienced pain and want and going without, and people not able to see what we are doing.