Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Mumbai, India, 1970 March 31 : autograph manuscript signed.

Describing her vision for the order of the scenes preceding the one where Lucia enters the ashram; opining that adding dialogue to the scene in Hari's room would "completely destroy" the feeling she hopes this sequence will evoke; reflecting on the deleterious impact that a visually interesting background can have on a scene ("scene and setting must spring to mind together"); providing an example of a scene in The Guru that she feels would have been stronger with a more dull setting; contrasting this with the choice to move "that Hari-Vikram scene to a more interesting setting"; disagreeing with him about the need for another scene "to replace the shrine scene"; elaborating on why she believes the ashram scene and the "hurry-and-hysteria movement in one continuous flow" will work, because "we've thoroughly prepared"; bemoaning scene 2 ("wretched, horrible scene 2!") and Ivory's decision that he doesn't like the dialogue, with which she disagrees; reflecting on her belief that when a story need extensive and repeated rewriting, "you may be quite sure that there's something wrong with the scene in itself"; discussing changes to the dialogue in scene 11; discussing the schedule for shooting; asking who will be at Jennifer Kendal's birthday celebrations; responding to his unwelcome disclosure that the film will be "nearer 2 hours" ("Oh you're a cool one, you are. A real fine Yankee, the pride of your forefathers"); telling him that she is returning a clipping of an article from "Jhow" ("Was actually written and not dictated by Ismail? I'm sure 20th Century Fox won't believe that"); disagreeing with the reviewers who say that Michael York "is an underrated actor".