Letter from James Ivory, Mumbai, India, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Kasauli, India, 1970 June 21 : typescript signed with autograph annotations and corrections.

Telling her about one afternoon of filming that had to be canceled due to rain; criticizing the performance of the extras in a scene that she had written; apprising her of Subrata Mitra's new diet and the impact of the diet on his mood; providing his opinion about the music for the film, which he does not think is suitable ("It's too Indian, not robust enough, and has sort of a gypsy, or Russian, or Middle-Eastern lilt to it which is all wrong"); telling her that the song on "the Lennie Bruce record is--a hallucination" and that there isn't a long wail as she has said there is; determining that while the song is nice, there's no one available to create something similar for them; discussing the cuts he has made to the ashram scene and "the film show"; asking her to send "the contents of the letter Lucia writes to Hari"; relating the reaction "Jaikishan and his musicians" had to "the Maharishi record"; reflecting on whether or not he should respond to the feedback he's gotten about the ashram scene and whether he may be making a similar mistake to one he feels he made in two previous films, The Guru and Shakespeare Wallah; recounting a dramatic evening when Karen Friedman stayed with him and Ismail Merchant, during which Mohan Nadkarni came by to talk after a physical confrontation with a man who Nadkarni's sister has been dating and later with Nadkarni's parents; describing another evening that he and Merchant spent with Sajid Khan, when "he and Ismail puffed for hours on a chillum. I refrained"; noting that Merchant has received a letter from Svetlana Alliluyeva.