Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 November 12 : typescript.

Telling him that she tried to call Merchant in Bombay but was told he was in Jaipur and would be gone for two to three weeks; saying she will nag Merchant about going back to New York, and expressing concern for Ivory "coming home to an empty apartment and getting up in one in the morning"; asking if he sent "that letter" to Filmways; complaining about "that ludicrous Montgomery" [a lawyer]; asking for a copy of her first letter to Filmways "so that I can start a file here"; saying she intends to continue "claiming" from them, and has brought a lot of New Yorker stationery with which to do so; mentioning a letter she recently received from Rex Stout, chairman of the Authors' Guild, offering help, and thinking she might take him up on the offer if Filmways doesn't respond; asking if her books have "gone off" by now [presumably, if they have been sent to India], and adding a request for two more by Gershom Scholem-- "The Messianic Idea in Judaism," and "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism"; hoping he got the letter she sent from Jerusalem [see MA 23840.960], and going on to describe in great detail a day trip to Haifa and her perambulations around the old city in Jerusalem, the mosques of Omar and al-Aksa, the Armenian quarter, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; making observations about the tense relations between the Jews and Arabs in Israel, and saying of the Jews she knows, "They were like Romans ... cold, imperious Roman conquerers"; musing, "I felt so strange-- I know all the wonderful things they've done & admire them & am proud to belong to them-- & yet & yet...I do feel it to be difficult to identify with Romans & conquerers, & is it really possible to forget those Arabs whom I think somehow I know better than I do Romans, to whom even in a way I feel closer, I don't know why. So all the time I felt miserable, uneasy in Israel, even traitorous as if I were on the wrong side"; relating in humorous detail her return flight to Delhi via Tehran, and noting how she has returned to her cocoon in Delhi; noting how, even with a small detail like misplacing her glasses, "I never have to look round for them again because Chara Dass comes & quietly deposits them at my elbow"; wishing she could share with Ivory one of the "many-coursed meals" that "appear with magic regularity" in her house; describing the household's present activities-- "Poji plays the piano & is the Virgin Mary in the school pageant, & Ava drafts & designs & is all architecture, & Nana & Polly sit downstairs & fill in forms to Harvard & Ann Arbor. Only poor Tona [one of the Jhabvala dogs] died-- last week, quite suddenly"; describing how two remaining dogs, Nixi and Mopa, "keep scratching all the time in the most unaesthetic, proletarian manner"; picking up after speaking to Merchant on the phone from Jaipur, relating his travel and shooting plans with Tony [Korner], and repeating Merchant's assertion that he had "received such cheerful news from you and Joe about the financing" that he is eager to return to New York; telling him Jhab will be going to Hong Kong soon and wondering if he got her cable about it; asking about photographs she asked him to send to Norton and to her, and if he has "returned Wally's plays to Ved?" and "where [underlined] is your 2nd letter ... ?"