Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, Mumbai, India, 1965 January 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying they must be feeling terrible about Geeta Bali [who died of smallpox at 35 on January 21], that it is terrible," and "that's the end of The Widow. No one else shall ever play her."; asking if "The Householder" really opened in Calcutta on the 22nd during "film week"; despairing over it, and over her work generally: "everything I do, everything I'm connected with, is hounded by-- no, not so much misfortune as neglect"; telling Ivory to go back to America-- "You're wasting some very good years of yours here and ... people will always resent you and everything you do and make it very clear to you that there is no place for you"; mentioning she and Jhab met "Jean Bownagry" [Franco-Indian documentary filmmaker Jehangir Bhownagary, who often went by "Jean"] -- "an old Bombay pal of Jhab's"-- recently, and he'd heard "so much" about "The Delhi Way" and wanted to see it but couldn't find it anywhere; saying Indira Gandhi and others have been wooing "Bownagry" to head the Indian Films Division, but she doesn't see why he's so sought after-- his documentary on Indian miniatures "came nowhere near the Sword and the Flute," Ivory's documentary short on the same subject; complaining that "the thoroughly untalented and commonplace-minded sort of people who hold high official positions are only capable of discovering talent, & pouring favours & riches, on those not too unlike themselves"; also complaining that Satyajit Ray, who came to Delhi recently and "never thought it worth his while to ring us up and say hello"; admitting, "As you see, I'm feeling thoroughly demoralized and in a hell of a bad temper all around"; asking them to write and tell them how work on "Shakespeare Wallah" is going, and reassuring them "I think you've made a very good film."