Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Kasauli, India, [1964] September 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Enclosing some scene pages [not present]; thinking there won't be much else Ivory needs while in Kasauli; saying it was wonderful to hear both Ivory and Merchant on the phone and to know they've made considerable progress; telling him that the call was awkward on her end as she had been in the bath and her hair was "one vast frozen mass of shampoo" which began to drip into her eyes; telling Ivory she has been talking to Madhur almost daily, and Madhur has been buying expensive clothes for her character Manjula's wardrobe and renting jewelry "for 5 Rs. a day from somewhere in Chandni Chowk"; saying it's a pity that Madhur hasn't met Leela Naidu, who is much like Manjula; saying she has done little aside from entertaining "a lady from the U.K. High Commission" and her "3 exquisitely dressed blond little children"; passing on news of Kushwant Singh from a writer's conference in Leeds, where R.K. Narayan was being honored; saying she now only wants to travel to Paris, London, or New York; transcribing a quotation from Dubois's "Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies" giving a very poor (and somewhat racist) account of traveling Indian performers of the 19th century and comparing them to current "Bombay film-makers."