Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, Mumbai, India, [1965 March 24] : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying it was good to hear their voices on the telephone, and that somehow they seem closer in Bombay than in Calcutta; continuing her argument against adding a train scene to "Shakespeare Wallah"; describing how her mother-in-law descended on them recently, just when she, Jhab, and the girls were enjoying having the house to themselves; telling them how Jhab teases his mother about not being able to control her daughter-in-law (Ruth), and for other things, which Ruth ascribes to "revenge not only for the sufferings she inflicted on him in his childhood (which were not negligible: he was her most unfavourite child) but also for those he has seen her inflict on her other daughter-in-law, the one in Bombay, when she was young & first came into the family & did not have as stout a champion of a husband to defend her as I have"; advising Merchant that if he ever marries, he must always take his wife's side, "even if she's wrong"; saying she has managed to finish two short stories, and has sold one to the New Yorker, though it's the worse of the two, in her opinion-- "They're crazy, they really are"; saying that "the only thing the New Yorker have to recommend then-- and it is, I admit, a very big thing-- is that they pay so well"-- otherwise, they "have no true judgement, only a superficial sort of 'taste'"; touching again, delicately, on the subject of Satyajit Ray's fee for composing the music for "Shakespeare Wallah" and asking them to "give another look to what you've paid the Kendals," as well as pointing out that their small fee "it seems, they've spent, very largely on keeping themselves alive while hanging around in Bombay waiting for you to do the dubbing"; asserting that "you'll be fair to those who are in a position to force your hand but not to those who aren't" and flippantly steeling herself for their "long, indignant, chiding protests" in reply; adding "obviously I really shouldn't be talking about money to you now that you don't have any"; saying she asked Jhab if they could make a loan to Ivory and Merchant, but he told her they would have to mortgage their house to do so; closing "I am [underlined] worried for you."