Tale Of A Story

ALEXANDRA Viet's has never had Cotton Mary published as a book. It came fresh out of a thesis at Columbia University almost 10 years ago. The part-autobiographical story touches briefly on Viet's years in India as a small child, the daughter of a diplomat, growing up under the influential gaze of the all-important ayah. But fiction takes over soon enough as the Anglo-Indian ayah in the film is much more complex and even a bit schizophrenic. The script was shown to Madhur Jaffrey in New York through a close friend of Viet's who happened to be Jaffrey's niece. Following a few informal readings, and given the Jaffrey-Merchant-Ivory connection, the production finally began taking shape after a number of revisions which Viet's said took on a Kafkaesque quality. She is glad that the production is now in its final stages so that she can move on to her next project - a novel set in West Virginia.