Letter from James Ivory, New York, New York, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1971 January 19 : typescript manuscript.

Mentioning that her two-part letter arrived on separate days, which drove him crazy; explaining that the censorship laws in India disgust him, and that he hates to read evidence of them in her letters; disagreeing with Jhabvala that the film should be forgotten; explaining that he wants it "to be seen by as many people as possible and continuously, because it will come into its own"; describing his hopes that with the right distributor (Brandon Films), the film could see more commercial success in North America; saying that "The Guru" was screened again at the Museum of Modern Art and he could see that "it was fabulously well received, as it was the last time"; connecting this screening to others of different films in the past; writing that of course Jhabvala would "want to hug B.T. ["Bombay Talkie"] to you, to hide it away, since it seems to you that there is nobody fit to see it" and that he and Merchant can much more easily "see the films and in a sense, commune, with them"; continuing that when they reached out to Fox to procure a copy of "The Guru," all twelve copies were in circulation around the country; deriding film critics because the amount of films they are obliged to see must obviously make it difficult for them to recognize films that actually have merit; saying he "isn't surprised they don't perceive our best effects, and if you combine their corruption with a lack of interest, film-poisoning with tiredness, what hope is there for any but the most obvious kinds of things?"; saying Ismail is consistently in a better mood these days; closing by prompting Jhabvala to work on the "About the Film," and that they will need it for the film's Paris premiere.