News India Times

www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know ly. He said we should leave. We got into an elevator. I remember how crowded it was. When we finally reached the ground floor, there were crowds of of- fice workers looking upward. I looked up and saw smoke coming from one of the towers. And this sounds ridiculous now, but my first thought was that there had been a small office fire. My mind didn’t have a reference for what I was seeing. Then a plane came over us – this was the second plane. I’ll never forget the sound of that engine. For a second, I remember wondering whether there was an airport on top of theWTC. That is how little I understood what was hap- pening. Your brain looks for an ordinary explanation because the real one is unimaginable. The French intern told me we need- ed to run – so I ran. After that, I mostly remember panic and dust. Did you feel a sense of terror or calm, and how did you get out of the building? I would not describe myself as calm, and I certainly would not describe myself as brave. In fact, someone I had known for barely a day had much better instincts than I did. We had been told to remain where we were. He was the one who convinced me to leave. When every- one was staring at the burning towers, he was the one who told me to run. I do not remember his name, and I wish I did. Every September 11th, I think about him, I wonder where he is and what his life became. And I wish I could thank him. Maybe, somehow, he will read this. Eventually, I made my way from lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side, where I was staying at Olin Hall atWeill Cornell Medical Center. I could not reach my parents for hours. Phones were not working nor- mally, and of course they had no idea whether I was safe. I was finally able to reach them in the early evening. I also remember the Metro North train ride home to upstate NY afterward. I felt people looking at me differently. I was a young brown man, and in those first hours after the attacks, I wondered whether some people thought I looked like someone they should fear. Of course, I don’t know what anyone was actually thinking, so I don’t want to overinterpret. I only know what it felt like to me at the time. But even this memory was overshad- owed by something bigger. I kept thinking about the people who had not been able to get out. The official death toll from the attack was nearly 3,000 people. While thou- sands were able to evacuate - firefighters, police officers, and other first responders were moving in while others were trying to escape. I kept wondering what the people who were trapped must have been feeling. That sense of vulnerability stayed with me. What effect did the tragedy have on your own life - in the short term and in the long term? It changed the direction of my life. I don’t want to make it sound as though becoming a doctor had never crossed my mind before 9/11. My father was a physician, and I had grown up around medicine. But I was genuinely exploring other careers, and finance was one of them. After 9/11, something became much clearer to me. I had just seen people at their most vulnerable. I kept thinking how helpless they must have felt and how desperately they must have wanted somebody to help them. I realized I wanted to dedicate my life doing something where, when people are frightened and vulnerable, I could be useful to them. A few weeks later, my supervisor at Merrill Lynch called. He told me how re- lieved he was that I was okay. I told him I would not be returning to finance. I applied to medical school. My application essay was largely about 9/11 and how the experience had affirmed my decision to pursue medi- cine. I remember one of my first medical school interviews afterward, at Down- state – in Brooklyn. The interviewer, a psychiatrist of Indian origin, question whether the story in my essay was actu- ally true. At the time I was deeply offended. This was something that I had just lived through, something that had affected me profoundly, and suddenly I felt as though I had to prove it had happened. But 25 years later, this is not the part of the story I spend much time thinking about. I ended up going to Stony Brook, in Long Island NY. I received outstanding medical education. And I met my wife there. Somehow, this terrible day redirected my professional life, but the path it put me on also ultimately led me to the per- son with whom I built my family. Today as you look back- do you feel a sense of fulfilment and do you feel that 9/11 is still the driving force in your life? how and why? I don’t know that I’d use the word fulfillment when talking about 9/11. I think the better word for me is gratitude. I am grateful that I got out. Grateful for that young intern. And I am very aware that many people standing only a short distance away did not have the same outcome. Today, I am the section Chief of Geni- tourinary Medical Oncology at Penn. I care for patients with bladder cancer. I train young oncologists. I lead a research program focused on generating real- world evidence in oncology and how we can learn from the experiences of patients outside clinical trials. I have also been fortunate to receive an endowed professorship, the David J Vaughn MD Professorship in Genitourinary Oncol- ogy. I am proud of those things, but they are not really how I think about the con- nection to 9/11. The connection is much simpler. It is the patient sitting in front of me. A cancer diagnosis can make a person feel incredibly vulnerable. One day you are living your life. Then suddenly, you hear a word like ‘cancer’, and your whole world changes. I cannot always take their fear away and do not always have the answers to the questions my patients ask. But - I can be there, help them un- derstand what is happening, help them make decisions, and help them feel that they are not alone. That is probably the closest connec- tion between the young person I was on 9/11 and the physician I am today. And there is one part of my career that I find particularly ironic. Some of the patients I care for are firefighters and other first responders from 9/11. I am very careful about saying that a particular individual’s cancer was caused by a particular exposure. But many responders experienced enor- mous exposure to dust, smoke, com- bustion products and other pollutants during rescue and recovery efforts. There is something very moving to me about sitting across from one of those patients. 25 years ago, when I was frightened, I was running away from that scene. They were running toward it. And now, sometimes, I have the privi- lege of taking care of them. You are now 25 years older and have two children of your own. What life- lessons can you teach them and others - about how to live their lives, and what courage, responsibilities, commitments etc. all of us should adopt? I think one of the biggest lessons is that life rarely follows the plan you make for it. Sometimes something terrible hap- pens and there is no lesson that makes it OK. But, we do get to decide what we do afterwards. I also want my children to understand that courage does not mean being fear- less. I was afraid on 9/11 and so I ran. The courage I remember that day belonged to other people- firefighters, police officers, emergency workers and ordinary people who helped strangers And, on a much smaller scale, it belonged to a young French intern who ignored the instinct to wait and told another confused college student (me) – “we need to go”. I have spent 25 years not knowing his name, but I have never forgotten what he did. If I could say something to my chil- dren about how to live, it would probably be this: be the person who notices when somebody else needs help. You may never know what effect a small decision has on another person’s life. That intern probably had no idea that the person running beside him would one day become a cancer doctor, have a wife and two kids, train other physicians, and still be thinking about him a quarter of a century later. And every 9/11, I still wish I could tell him- Thank you. Living To Tell The Tale Of 9/11 PHOTO: PROVIDED Dr. Ronac Mamtani with his children at UPenn’s basketball court. News India Times (September 5, 2026 - September 11, 2026) September 11, 2026 18 25th Anniversary Of 9/11 - Continued From Page 14