Letter from James Ivory, Mumbai, India, to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Delhi, India, 1983 March 5 : autograph manuscript signed.

Telling her that he and Merchant have bought rugs for her New York apartment and for Ava, and explaining his reasoning in choosing as he did; telling her he attended a last-day screening of "Quartet" in Bombay and describing it as "a trial," since the exhibitors added a long intermission with advertisements and trailers, and he was cornered by Vanraj Bhatia, who "kept up a stream of talk"; describing how the audience laughed at Maggie Smith's breakdown scene, and the state censors seemed to have made their cuts arbitrarily; giving her his impressions of "Gandhi," which he finally saw; enclosing two clippings about Tennessee Williams, and noting Gore Vidal's tendency to patronize and belittle other writers; reminiscing about his meeting with Truman Capote, when Capote got "all worked up" about Vidal; describing the scene-- and empty buffet table, reminiscent of "Bombay Talkie"-- at the premiere of "Vijeta," to which they'd been invited by Shashi and Jennifer; noting that "Shashi has gotten awfully fat" and is often drunk, and Jennifer says she is going to take him to Jindal Health Farm when she gets back from working on ""The Far Pavilions"; noting that, due to a mix-up, he's staying at the Oberoi rather than the more convenient Taj, but that they are treating him like a VIP-- "complimetary bottle of Scotch, big basket of fruit. If they really [underlined] wanted to give me a VIP feeling, they'd do my laundry for free instead. I shall tell them that."