Punjabi’s grand dame of letters Amrita Pritam had willed that her house in the Capital should be preserved as a memorial to her and that her partner Imroz should live there. However, just five years after her death, it has been sold by her son to builders, who have lost no time in razing it to
the ground. While writing an ode to the house that Amrita built, Nirupama Dutt recounts the insensitive attitude we, as a nation, have to our cultural heritage
Amrita Pritam’s abode owed its heritage value also to the fact that it was
frequented by Shiv Kumar Batalvi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Dalip Kaur Tiwana,
Gurdial Singh as well as a host of Pakistani writers Photo courtesy: Imroz
THe month of May was not a merry one, certainly not for the lovers of art and literature, for it marked the sad end of a dream, a dream turned into reality by one of the most celebrated poets of our times, who enjoyed a cult status in her lifetime and continues to do so even now. It took almost a month for the sad tidings to reach out to the literary world.
A couple of weeks ago, Surinder Sharma, a Patiala-based literary buff, was on the telephone. Sharma has a fetish for calling up friends and telling jokes from his vast repertoire. But this time, he was not joking. He was almost sobbing as he said: “K-25, Hauz Khas, has been sold and already demolished. Imroz went to see it being bulldozed.” I was not shocked because the news had come to me from another Amrita-Imroz fan, but I shared his grief, as do many others.
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