Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 February 25 : autograph manuscript signed.

Telling Ivory that "Ismail has been and gone" and that the Bombay premiere of "Bombay Talkie" is tonight-- a charity benefit for Karan and Kunal's (Shashi and Jennifer's sons') school-- "Ismail says those ladies are crazy and making everyone's life hell"; enumerating the various unpleasant messages Merchant received while in Delhi: "1) the garage won't have his car ready as they had promised, so [he should] take a taxi from the airport; 2) Burlington's won't have the suit [...] ready for the premiere as promised because the tailors are on strike; 3) the Taj people have indignantly rejected the 6 tickets sent to them for the premiere and said send us 12 or nothing. So you see everything is-- as always"; saying Merchant is sick with "a heavy feverish cold which he says is due to exhaustion," and she agrees-- "Now really for the first time is it brought home to me what we've done to him"; feeling guilt and regret for what their string of flops has done to Merchant, maintaining that she and Ivory are better able to ignore the lack of financial success and focus on the artistic fulfillment, whereas Merchant cannot; concerned that Sashi and Jennifer are suffereing from a similar malaise; passing on that Merchant is worried at not having heard from Ivory lately, and chiding him for not having wanted to make the Chaudhuri documentary because he was "tired"-- "What tired? After only 10 months in India, and only one tiny feature film? No wonder he gets impatient with you"; saying Merchant has promised to report on the Bombay premiere to her, and "as soon as he does I'll write to you again."