Letter from Ismail Merchant, Mumbai, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, [1964] February 12 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that after "Mother had rubbed a bag of ice on my head for a couple of hours," his temperature is back to normal and he is feeling better, though he had to miss three fasts for Ramadan; pointing out Eid will be the 15th of February; suspecting he has lost weight and definitely feeling "I have lost energy," but telling Ivory not to be alarmed as he has his whole family plus the next door neighbors looking after him; feeling ashamed of his past letters after reading Ivory's letter which arrived that morning, since Ivory is "working much more than me"; describing a "perturbed" phone call from Jhab regarding a cable he received from Ivory about the Columbia affair; mentioning that Durga Khote's younger son has died, and that the planned sitar recital will be postponed until Ivory is in India; noting that the "required papers" (probably the MIP letterhead) have not arrived in the morning mail, and hoping perhaps the afternoon mail will bring them; mentioning that he has floated the idea of using an Indian distributor to the Columbia India representative.