Letter from James Ivory, Mumbai, India, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1970 March 17 : typescript signed.

Expressing intrigue at a revised scene that she's described but that he has not yet received; disagreeing with her assessment of the ending and her suggestion to add in shots of Lucia having a premonition of the murder; asking her to figure out how to make Lucia's journey to the ashram better motivated in the script and explaining why this change is needed; updating her with a list of scenes that have been shot; reiterating that Lucia, in the current version of the film, does not have a strong reason for going to an ashram ("Why should she? I mean, speaking from the viewpoint of an audience."); analyzing scenes that have been shot, particularly "the ashram scene", "the Elephanta footage", "Zia [Mohyeddin] and Jennifer [Kendal]'s scenes", and "the Anjana Devi rushes" and expressing his approval; telling her about a party of European tourists that interrupted filming on the staircase; reporting an incident between the filming and a wedding party in the Taj Mahal Hotel; describing a friend of his, Bob Hardgrave, that is coming to Delhi soon and telling her that she "won't regret meeting him"; noting that a positive review of The Guru is enclosed from the Hudson Review and asking her to return it when she's done; providing a snippet of a conversation between Tom and Subrata that happened on set.