When will the Titanic sink, Dadi?

That was one of the most astute comments coming out of the mouth of a bored 5-year-old watching James Cameron’s much hyped Titanic bleary-eyed when it was first released in Mumbai. I was sitting in a seat within earshot and couldn’t agree more with the remark and the sentiment. In fact, watching the over the top brouhaha going on the wide screen, I could not help wondering if the much celebrated director had taken – prior to making his magnum opus − a sabbatical in Bollywood in order to observe how they blow everything out of proportion out here or sometimes make it crawl to a mind-numbing statis that pretends to be the very thing it is not. This rant was brought on by the reminder over the FM Monday morning that the centenary of the Titanic’s demise was on 14 April. To me, all luxury liners stand for monumental extravagance, wastage of precious resources, elitist vanity and an insult to common folks. So what are the losers the world over celebrating the centenary for?