Letter from James Ivory, New York, New York, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1971 April 24 : carbon copy typescript.

Telling her he is "looking forward very much to reading your new novel," even though she's told him nothing about it, but he doesn't like the title she chose for her latest short story collection ["The Experience of India"] and explaining why; reporting two recent local screenings of "the Curate's Egg" [i.e. "Bombay Talkie"]; describing the first one in East Hampton on Long Island, managed by Herb Golden's wife Trudy-- "Ismail was in his New York 'Now' Electric Indian clothes, complete with a Vilayat Khan-Sahib trailing Kashmiri scarf, and I was-- well, just as usual, I guess"-- where it became apparent that the audience had no sympathy for the character Lucia, and where a man "went berserk, quite crazy [...] grabbed the theatre custodian by the throat and started shouting about police repression in East Hampton ..."; wondering, "Does this mean Bombay Talkie has the effect on unsettled, troubled souls of driving them over the edge?"; describing the second screening, in Toronto, where some flaw in the projector removed the red from the image, and where Ivory was gratified that the audience rejected the more bombastic, pretentious questions asked afterward.