Letter from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, to James Ivory, New York, New York, 1971 August 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Remarking that she saw in the Observer that "Bombay Talkie" is closing in London tomorrow after a two-week run; observing that "it seem the final coup de grâce, and perhaps it is best so. We must forget this film for a long time"; feeling "very sorry for Jennifer but I'm afraid there is no help for it ... though probably it is the worst for her. I don't feel sorry for you at all. It was only a stepping stone for you"; hoping "Ismail isn't cross with you (and me) all over again"; telling him "I can't really quite believe that I shall be seeing you as soon as it now appears"; recounting "the familiar nightmares" she is now experiencing before the trip-- bringing an expired passport, forgetting to bring her health certificate, etc.; asking him to write her quickly with anything he wants her to bring from India, and reminding him that "[y]ou needn't be too afraid to mention it because it will not be me who will select it but Madhur"; reminding him to ask Merchant as well; asking him if he has "heard of a woman called Madeleine Slade? Mira Behen? ... She was sort of Gandhi's right-hand woman"; noting that Slade left India for Vienna after Gandhi's death, and Ved went to interview her there; telling him, "[Ved] couldn't get a thing out of her. She had just put the entire experience out of her mind-- Gandhi, Mother India, all those years of ashram living-- she had just wiped it all off and is now interested on nothing but Beethoven [underlined] ... Can you imagine! Can that be done? To extirpate it? Dig is up, throw it away ... negate it? Oh what hope for me. What unexpected hope! But perhaps she is a Marie Seton type who can easily transfer from one shining ideal to the other..."; noting that "Mirabehen" has kept one "relic" of her time in India-- "a servant called Brahmachariji. Very useful."