Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, place not identified, 1970 July 24 : autograph manuscript signed.

Referring to an enclosed "magazine" by Matthew Freeman ("life in the Washington Embassy, as seen from the nursery"); critiquing Penelope Gilliatt's recent columns as a film critic, including one on Federico Fellini's recent work; acknowledging that Penelope Mortimer is no longer the film critic of the Observer ("We've lost one friend now. About time too"); exclaiming that she "didn't want to do that song" and felt embarrassed when Anna Carol Dudley sang their song to him over the phone; asserting that the lyrics of the song chosen ultimately matter less than the feeling; telling him that she wrote an essay for Alan Ross at The London Magazine called "Myself in India", and asking him if he has written anything for Ross; expressing her concern that the focus of the issue for which she wrote the essay has shifted from India to "Living Abroad"; reflecting on how her life in India is different than an imagined ideal of expatriate life abroad; connecting the experiences she described in her essay to the experiences of the American girl ("Ved's friend"), who is "no longer wild or blind or blissful, but wary, bewildered, interested, both fascinated and repelled"; describing this girl, Sasha Bruce, and referring to her as a "Henry James heroine"; repeating a conversation that occurred between "Sasha and her friend and a middle-aged Sikh"; detailing a recent offer and accompanying materials that she received from Welthy Fisher to write Fisher's biography; deriding Fisher's achievements (specifically that her primary accomplishment appears to be having lived to the age of 90); asking how he is ("Jennifer [Kendal] says you're miserable. Are you?").