When Titanic released in 1997, I was living in Calcutta; the movie ran to packed houses at the city’s Globe theatre (that has now been dismantled since cine-goers are no longer interested to visit standalone cinema halls and want to, instead, converge at multiplexes) for more than 40 weeks.

I watched Titanic six times at the theatre — and probably a hundred times after that on cable and satellite television — and never tired of it. Everyone I knew, including my grandmother, had seen the movie. They loved it, cried buckets, and came back to the Globe theatre for seconds and thirds (it was the same story world-wide).

“Our hearts sank when the Titanic sank,” everyone said, with feeling, while I agreed whole-heartedly, making a silent note of the overwhelming power of the silver screen.

There had been an earlier cinematic version of the Titanic tragedy, a 1953-released film by the same name, also a major hit, and that went on to pick up a few Oscars — but not as many as the Kate Winslet-Leonardo Di Caprio-starrer did in 1998.

This week, my heart sank again when I read that the last survivor of the RMS Titanic had passed away; she died in a hospital very close to Southampton — from where the passenger liner set sail more than 97 years ago. Ninety-seven-year-old-Millvina Dean was two months old when she was tucked into a lifeboat that dark night the ship sank, along with her mother and her little brother.

Her father remained onboard the RMS Titanic and met his watery grave along with the 1,500-odd passengers who couldn’t be accommodated 
into lifeboats.

Media reports tell us that Millvina’s parents were working-class folks, who were moving from England to the United States in search of a better life. 
On the RMS Titanic, they were travelling third-class.

In my mind’s eye, I immediately 
visualised their ‘compartment’: it 
would have looked similar to the one occupied by the working-class Jack (DiCaprio) in the film, with bunk beds and very little amenities (compared to the lavish suites occupied by the upper-class Rose — played resplendently by Winslet on screen — and her pretentious mother).

I could ‘see’ just how baby Millvina, her brother and her mother might have been bundled into lifeboat number 10, in the midst of the surrounding — and unfolding — maelstrom of 
human tragedy.

And I could very nearly feel what her mother would have been going through as she left her husband behind on the ship’s deck, while he tried to reassure with a promise that he’d take a lifeboat the moment the “women and children” were safely out of the way — in all likelihood aware of the fact that there was a woeful shortage of lifeboats.

Towards the end of her life, Millvina was forced to auction “a suitcase filled with clothes given to her family when they arrived in America, and compensation letters sent to her mother from the Titanic Relief Fund” the media reported. But, “the mementoes sold at auction were returned to her by the buyer”.

DiCaprio and Winslet — the two Titanic stars — along with James Cameron donated £20,000 to The Millvina Fund for her medical treatment.

I know I wouldn’t have been half as moved by the news of Millvina’s death at a ripe old age had it not been for Cameron’s Titanic. So, even though I know it’s a strange thing to say, I want to thank him for bringing RMS Titanic so much closer to my heart.

Sushmita Bose is Features Editor of Khaleej Times and can be reached at: sushmita@khaleejtimes.com