Archive · 30 Aug 2026
Amrita Pritam’s Two Delhis: A City Lived, Written, Erased
Amrita Pritam was a famous writer who moved to Delhi from Lahore in 1947.
She worked there, published a magazine, and built a home with the artist Imroz.
Delhi was also the subject of many of her poems and stories.
In those works, she often described the city as lonely, unfair, and difficult for women.
Her home in Hauz Khas was meant to be preserved after her death.
However, it was sold and demolished about five years later.
Imroz then moved to a nearby apartment.
Today, the house is gone, but Pritam’s books and poems still help people find her.
Her writing suggests that a person’s real home can live in memory and literature rather than at one fixed address.
Amrita Pritam moved from Lahore to Delhi in 1947 and lived there until her death in 2005.
She worked at All India Radio, edited Nagmani from her Hauz Khas home, and later received official recognition from Delhi institutions.
Her poems and fiction portrayed Delhi as lonely, gendered, morally decayed, and hostile to its residents.
Pritam’s home at K-25, Hauz Khas, was demolished around 2010 after her son sold it to a builder.
Although the address disappeared, her writing continues to preserve her connection with Delhi through readers, translations, and secondhand books.
- Who
- Amrita Pritam, her partner Imroz, and the Delhi literary world are central to the account.
- What
- The article contrasts the Delhi Pritam inhabited with the harsher Delhi she depicted in her writing, culminating in the demolition of her home.
- When
- Pritam lived in Delhi from 1947 until her death in 2005; her Hauz Khas home was demolished five years after her death.
- Where
- Delhi, especially K-25 in Hauz Khas, along with the Lahore she left behind.
- Why
- The article examines how Delhi supported Pritam’s working life while also becoming the city she criticized and ultimately the city that erased her physical address.
- Arrival in Delhi
- Amrita Pritam arrived from Lahore via Dehradun in 1947, aged 28.
- Radio career
- She worked as an announcer in All India Radio’s Punjabi service until 1961.
- Hauz Khas home
- K-25, Hauz Khas, was a rehabilitation plot allotted to artists displaced from Lahore.
- Nagmani
- Beginning in 1966, Pritam and Imroz edited the Punjabi literary monthly Nagmani from their home.
- Official recognition
- Delhi University awarded Pritam an honorary doctorate in 1973, and she was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1986.
- Home’s demolition
- Pritam’s son sold K-25 to a builder five years after her death, and the house was demolished.
- Key works
- Her Delhi-related works discussed include “Dilli is sheher ka naam hai,” Dilli ki Galiyan, Ek Sheher ki Maut, and Rasidi Ticket.