Letter from James Ivory, London, England, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1968 September 5 : typescript signed.

Laying out his thoughts on the character of the producer in "Shashi and Jennifer's film" [i.e. "Bombay Talkie"], and suggesting they tailor the role to Utpal Dutt, basing ideas on his very negative opinions of Bengali Bollywood transplants like Bimal Roy and Sunil Dutt; giving a very long and detailed description of his and Merchant's recent trip to Ireland, including an outing "to see the last travelling actors' company in Ireland" and the astonishing reactions of the audience to their performance, other "amateur theatricals," a mad game of hide and seek at their hosts' home-- "Ismail hid in a closet and a teapot fell on his head"-- and an anticlimactic visit to Dublin; musing on the fact that, in spite of being "on ancestral soil" in Ireland, he "couldn't quite connect"; telling her he will be moving out of Carlton Tower in about a week and into the flat they found, and assuring her that she would be very comfortable there when she comes to London; explaining how unsettled their post-production schedule is, as "There are so many pictures being finished in England right now that there's a terrific jamb-up," and that she should probably just go ahead with her travel plans and not try to tailor them to the film's schedule; signing off with "Things have a way of working out, this most likely will too," and asking for her opinion of what he wrote "about Shashi and Jennifer's film."