Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, Mumbai, India, 1970 May 11 : autograph manuscript signed.

Asking what he might like to write for The London Magazine, a publication she previously asked to reach out to him; opining that Ivory may not know what it is like to actually live in India because "you've always been here for a purpose" ("I'm not saying this in reproach or in envy or anything, only stating a fact"); describing a Urdu-language performance of Brecht's Threepenny Opera by the National School of Drama with a German director from the Berliner Ensemble, which she thought was produced well but was still "so odd" ("can you imagine a Maharashtrian Marlene Dietrich?); reflecting on how the dancers had been "trained very well. But what for? This didn't mean anything to them, obviously not, how could it?"; describing the performance space and the audience; describing "another odd audience" at a Balasaraswati performance featuring the singer Jon Higgins that she attended with friends of Mehra's in the gym of the American school which was delayed because "the musicians had got kidnapped. Perhaps not actually kidnapped - but they'd been taken out to see Delhi in a taxi and weren't brought back in time"; recounting how shocked Mehra's friends were to see many Westerners in the audience wearing saris, kameez, and kurtas; discussing what Ismail Merchant wrote in letters that he sent her from New York; reflecting on Merchant's personality.