She spoke of growing up in the 1940s in Sholapur in Maharashtra. She would go to the movies with her sister, and look in wonder at the American musicals playing there. There she saw on screen the holy grail for singers and performers Carnegie Hall in New York City. She could not have imagined that more than half a century later, she would be able to go beyond her childhood dreams and perform at that venue.

The other memory she had of those movies was of the logo of one of those companies. She was in awe of the image of the plane circling the globe of the earth, bringing up the Universal banner. And now she could hardlybelieve that it was she who was welcoming them to India.

A week or so later, India has joined nations such as France and Canada at the WTO in combating Hollywood's attempt at the ``Coca-colonization'' of the world. The demon is the figure of $30 million in revenue that Hollywood films earned in India last year. So to preserve our culture, the barriers are not to come down. It is an emotional argument, but it seems flawed on two counts.

Firstly, it assumes the Indian audience to be a passive one, one that will accept any film put before it, whether it stars Shah Rukh or Tom Cruise. That is obviously not true, apart fom the occasional success of animal flicks like Jurassic Park and Anaconda dubbed into Hindi.

Secondly, these so-called cultural imperialists have in the past played a great role in the preservation of our cultural heritage, in the form of music. A number of maestros, from Ravi Shankar to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, have been promoted extensively on Western labels and reached a far wider audiencethan they would have with the marketing and promotional clout of these labels. And when it comes to films, we have ample evidence as to what these multinationals offer. We would all never have been treated to the sight of Roberto Benigni jumping up and down on the seats at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last March after winning Academy Awards for Life Is Beautiful without the backing and marketing savvy of Disney's Miramax.

Besides, some of the other countries that are anti-Hollywood are hardly the Utopian breeding ground for creative talent to emerge a lot of them are controlled by near-monopolistic media companies, so in some cases this lobbying at the WTO is just that vested interests keeping out unwanted competition.

In a global scenario, performers, technicians and businessmen from all countries are collaborating on projects that are truly international. Witness Sense and Sensibility, Shakespeare in Love, The Messenger, Elizabeth; all these are examples of successful collaboration at its best.

Let us not get it wrong Hollywood, as any other industry, is motivated by the bottomline. But this is a business where (at least sometimes) talent translates into profits. And they have had a tradition of welcoming foreign talent for several decades, from German directors in the first half of the century, to a list of celebrated names from our continent more recently, among them Peter Weir, Ang Lee and Shekhar Kapur.

So while it is wise to be vigilant in some matters, at this time we also have an opportunity to launch a counterattack to this invasion and use these companies to bring Bollywood into multiplexes the world over. And I know that with Ashaji on our side, we at least have a fighting chance.