Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, New York, New York, 1967 January 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Relating Catherine Freeman's difficulties in trying to get the Indian government to release "Shakespeare Wallah" from customs limbo-- "And you want a letter from the MInistry! And you want them to pay your return fare to New York! What sort of a dream-world are you living in?"; pointing out that if Catherine "succeeds in wresting SW out of the Ministry," they will still have to deal with the censors, and if they want to release in India, they will have to come to India, as no-one else has the time to devote to the task, as it's "a full-time job"; upbraiding them for "wasting your time sending everybody letters" about it, especially "poor" Madhur, who is trying to find work in Bombay; warning Merchant in particular about name-dropping John Freeman and the Prime Minister in letters to American Express; insisting that "the one really sensible & utterly desireable thing you can do is to sit on the 5 February plane & come [to India]"; thanking them for a gift of cologne, as for her the scent immediately envokes their apartment in New York, "with the checked bedcovers & the clothes lying about, and the view of fairy palaces out of the window."