Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 January 21 : autograph manuscript signed.

Providing Jhab's clothing measurements [see MA 23840.910]; hoping Ivory can send the clothes via Ismail, and that money is not too tight for him at present; considering Ivory's reverie of an angel investor telling them, "Here, boys, here's half a million" and growing anxious at the possibility that such a statement might come with the caveat that they again shoot in India; insisting "There must be nothing to tempt you to come back here to make another film till several years of achievement have passed by. It would be walking into what would be for you a professional trap as it was for Dr. Fabri and others like him a personal trap"; musing on the limited conditions under which low-budget production in India is viable; citing "Bhuvan Shome" as the the only low-budget, young-director film to have had a domestic commercial release; describing the climate as "only apathy, things running down, dispiritedness too flaccid even to become despair"; relating the story of one of their American student neighbors, "a Jewish boy of 20, from New York," who abruptly "went mad" and, after disappearing and later being found and hospitalized, is about to be sent back to New York with a doctor.