Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Mumbai, India, 1970 May 1 : autograph manuscript signed.

Lamenting that "it feels like everyone is allowed to correct their mistakes as they go along except me"; wishing she could return to Mumbai to see more of the filming and have the chance to adjust the script in real-time, as she expected to do; explaining why she believes the dialogue-heavy scenes are still dynamic and why there are enough other action-oriented scenes; complaining about Subrata Mitra's approach to lighting; saying that she knows he has been having "a very bad time in Bombay with Ismail running off like that and leaving you to cope"; praising Zia Mohyeddin for being "a good, loyal soul" and offering the enclosed clipping as evidence; relaying what Mohyeddin has told her about the negative perception of Merchant Ivory films among people in the local arts scene, including Romesh Thapar, Ebrahim Alkazi, and Anita Malika ("If only there were some money! I wouldn't mind running down India a bit more if there were"); expressing her discomfort with being in public now because of the negative perception of their work; giving an example of this discomfort manifesting when "Mehra" went to see "the Russian version of War and Peace" recently, refusing to meet outside Vigyan Bhawan ("I feel surrounded by enemies"); reiterating her displeasure that she will not be able to make small corrections to the script before dubbing begins ("I thought we didn't work that way"); complaining about the length of time his letters take to reach her compared to the delay when other people send letters; asking him not to send letters by registered mail because often she cannot hear the mail carrier over the air conditioning; apologizing for "the grumbling".