Sense and Sensibility: Playing On…

There is a scene in the film ‘Titanic’ that has stayed with me long after the love story faded and the spectacle of the sinking ship dimmed. As the great vessel begins to tilt and panic spreads, as lifeboats are lowered and people scramble for survival, four musicians walk up to the deck and begin to play. Not as a protest. Not as performance. Simply because it is what they can offer; it is what they know how to do. In the middle of a catastrophe, they choose music.

I have been thinking about those musicians and that visual.

For the past fortnight, it has been rather hard to think of much else besides the news. War headlines have colonised prime time television (the new ‘Bridgerton’ season must wait), morning papers and the relentless scroll of the phone screen. The images are not easy - drones cutting through skies like something from a dystopian film, busy airports shut and related implications that the mind is trying to process or failing to.

And yet, life continues in the smaller windows between the headlines. The ‘WhatsApp’ groups march on, with horror and the humour sitting cheek to jowl. Cylinder jokes arrive between footage of destruction. Memes about the stock market share space with appeals for humanitarian aid. Someone ritually forwards a sunrise photograph with an inspirational quote about hope.

Watching closely, one also notices the range of coping dialects being spoken all around. Some people go quiet and philosophical, suddenly aware of how small a dot they are in this vast, indifferent universe and finding, oddly, a kind of humility and peace in that smallness. Others swing to the opposite end entirely - YOLO - you only live once, they declare and vehemently play the game. If the world is this fragile and arbitrary, why not take the leap - quit the job, book the trip, get the tattoo or file for separation! Then there are the pragmatists, coolly advising that a bloodbath is, historically, an excellent time to enter the stock market. Mutual funds, they remind you, are subject to market risk. Clearly, quite apparently, so is everything else.

The truth is, there is no correct way to hold a crisis that isn’t yours and yet has somehow landed on your plate - this one quite literally as induction stoves replace LPG flames. Some will cope through laughter, some with solidarity; some will follow every development obsessively, whilst others will switch off entirely, knowing that the headlines will continue with or without their anxiety as witnesses.

None of these responses is entirely wrong. None is entirely right either. They are simply the different ways we ordinary folks are trying to make some sense of it all and come out at the other end, less hurt, less hollowed out and still standing. Each path is valid. Each is, in its own way, a person playing their instrument on the deck.

What perhaps matters more than which path we choose is what we carry with us along the way. In times like these, when cynicism is never more than a headline away, when outrage is abundant and hope feels almost naive, it becomes quietly important to hold onto two small, unglamorous things: kindness and the ability to simply take the next step. For ourselves as much as for the people next to us. Not grand gestures - simply the willingness to offer a smile if not a solution, a moment of warmth if not an answer.

The musicians on the ‘Titanic’ couldn’t stop the ship from sinking. But they played anyway. It’s what they could do. It’s what made their sonata unforgettable.

Supriya Newar is a multi-lingual writer and poet from Calcutta. Besides being a music aficionado, she is also an avid traveller. She may be reached at [email protected]