To which question, thousands have probably replied yes, much to the chagrin of the tourist trade in Mahabaleshwar. But Mahabaleshwar is such a beautiful place I had the sheer joy of witnessing an orange-blue sunrise come up from behind the fort of Pratapgadh, with little cotton balls of mist suspended above the lush green forest carpet of the valley floor thousands of feet below. It was magical, and something about it was soquintessentially Indian.

I wonder what is this fascination with our filmmakers for that same train station in semi-rural Switzerland, with the male and female leads on opposite sides of the tracks. Maybe it is a tribute of a very post-modernist kind, but it's galling nevertheless when you have so many acres and acres of virgin space in India that is thirsting for a camera to cast its eye over it. And the locals who are thirsting for the economic benefits of having a film unit stationed in their region, instead of spending 10 times the amount in foreign exchange elsewhere.

Unfortunately, we have no one to blame but ourselves. In practically every other country, and in a number of major cities within each country, you have film promotion councils set up exclusively for the purpose of promoting film production within their territory. So while you had Toronto convincing the rest of the world that it is a better and cheaper New York than New York, it was only a matter of time before the latter rallied around,giving huge incentives for producers to be in Manhattan or any other borough. Sadly, here there are as many disincentives -- charges for shooting on the streets, a horrific mess of red tape to shoot in any public institution, including trains, BEST buses or public buildings, and no infrastructural support. So while we live in a country of scenic and cultural beauty that has fascinated several filmmakers over the years, we have also succeeded in driving away directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese to places like Sri Lanka and Morocco instead, while we pack our bags for Europe and the United States. I guess we will have to wait until someone with the vision of Chandrababu Naidu takes charge of the situation. Perhaps what is more frustrating is that these foreign locales take away from the sense of place that a movie conveys to you. These cutaways to a sports car roaring down the autobahn can jar the viewer if handled by a director less adept than David Dhawan, in whose case the entire film istreated that way. An audience that is exposed to the world through CNN, BBC, Discovery and National Geographic, is not likely to be dazzled purely by the vista provided by a cinematographer. We need to work harder at building these visual moments into our story, to construct a cohesive visual work that is integrated into the narrative seamlessly. That is what a director should bring to a film.

For anyone under the illusion that a great variety of locations is an essential part of a film, take a look at a film made in a restricted space -- a single location which is converted into one of the greatest, hugest cinematic canvasses of our time by a director's brilliant imagination, where the mind and eye are stunned by the treat they are privileged to witness, not for one second in three hours veering anywhere close to monotony -- Titanic.