Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Kasauli, India, [1964] September 15 : autograph manuscript signed.

Relieved to have finally gotten through on the telephone to Ivory in Kasauli, both to let him know about the rest of the company's arrival times and to check on his health, which wasn't good when he left for Kasauli; describing her pre-production anxiety, the same as she had before the beginning of "The Householder" shoot, "this fearful heaviness around the heart and head," compounded by "Ismail coming in, clutching the area around his heart and saying he felt a constriction there"; continuing "And yesterday-- as you know by now-- was a typical MIP day, everything going wrong"; describing the Kendals, fresh off a tour and looking surprisingly hale, until the end of that "MIP day"; relating that "Pratap Sharma also had a frustrating day, trying to engage me in intellectual conversation," until she hit on the idea of playing all her poetry records to keep him entertained and quiet; describing Sharma enlisting her daughters as an audience while he rehearsed his role, while "in the middle of this, Ismail-- always a philistine-- had the bad taste to start shouting at Charan Dass for not cleaning the chandelier properly"; saying she ended up giving Sharma advice on film acting -- "words poured from my lips-- I don't know where they came from"; relating an incident where Foo (Felicity Kendal) pointed out correctly that nobody has yet spoken to her about her part at all; advising Ivory to make sure the actors know he is as passionate about their roles as they are; relating that Geoffrey Kendal hasn't had time to read the script yet, but she had a long conversation with him about elastic-sided boots; asking Ismail where the train ticket for Pinchoo Kapoor is, and suggesting he be allowed to improvise some of his role.