Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 February 4 : autograph manuscript signed.

Opening "Dear Mr. I. (which is what Diarmuid Russell calls you-- don't you like it?"; assuming that Merchant will be in his way to India by the time this letter reaches Ivory; saying she is pleased Merchant will be in India when "Bombay Talkie" opens there, to keep her company; commenting on the ongoing wait for the censors' certificate for the film, recounting a conversation Jhab had with a Ministry official in which he inquired about "the elephant" and was told, "The trunk has come out," and hoping Merchant can "give it the last push"; saying she has only seen one Ozu film but has been looking for more, and thinks of him as "a sort of Japanese Satyajit Ray"; relating a story told to her by an English girl who was told by another India filmmaker that Ray's films were outdated; commenting that, while Ivory said "Enfant Sauvage" was a flop [see MA 23840.696], she had heard it was a great success in Paris; reiterating her conviction that "you can afford flops only if you have a home market"; saying she is "sick to death of it"; asking "Don't you want to draw a line underneath and say finished, finished [sic]. And yes, as you were played into India by the sound of Subrata's sitar so let the sound of Nirad C. play you out again"; telling him she likes the title for "the N.C. [Nirad Chaudhuri] film very much" and anticipates "shrieks" from people who do not; asserting that "Indians abroad are always even more chauvinistic than the ones at home, & the colder climate seems to make them more militant too-- hence all the fuss about the Malle films"; noting that Chaudhuri himself, while now "a licensed jester [who] can say anything he likes," spent "about 13 years of bitter revilement & opposition to get people to this point"; mentioning that Chaudhuri's son was in Delhi recently and told Jhabvala that his father enjoyed the filming very much and is working on a biography of Max Müller, and that her brother holds the same chair at Oxford that Müller did; describing meeting actor Kabir Bedi's mother, a Buddhist nun, at the hospital while visiting a friend who was attacked in her home by an intruder; also describing Bedi's father, "a saint of some description with his own followers who reverently call him Baba," and Bedi's own "lovely Juhu flat" with "no furniture all, just throw cushions all over the floor & they lie there & talk -- oh! about every subject under the sun! Film-- art-- books-- life-- love-- what sparks are struck off from those lively minds (combining the best of East & West) and coffee is sipped from pottery mugs."