Lalitha Lajmi often places windows within domestic spaces, windows that look into landscapes of the mind. These she depicts as psychological self-portraits. Lajmi's father was a poet and her mother was a polylingual writer. Drawn from personal history, her work amounts to a visual biography that is left open to interpretation by her viewers, presenting dichotomies that are both humourous and tragic, akin to the stories her brother, the legendary director Guru Dutt, often narrated through his films. Images in her works are recurring metaphors, with references to relationships, dream sequences, and co-extant identities. The performer, often a clown, plays out expected domestic and societal roles, the mask conceals alternate undisclosed identities, and the skull a vanitas for the constancy of death.

She returned to her career as an artist after her marriage, and the birth of her children, through an exhibition by the legendry collective, the Progressive Artists Group in 1960, at the Artist's Centre in Bombay. A year later her mentor KH Ara, who had included her in the exhibition, gave her the opportunity to mount her first solo exhibition. One of the few women artists of that period, Lalitha managed her artistic career, along with the responsibilities of a family, and those of an art teacher in a school. hrough a vocabulary of images and perspectives within the same plane, Lalitha narrated a layered history of modern Indian women in the decades that followed Indian independence.

Returning to her home tired, late into the evening - and the lack of sunlight - curtailed her ability to paint. Having studied the art of intaglio and etching through a government-funded program for evening classes at the Sir JJ School of Art, from 1973 to 1976, Lalitha created a press within her kitchen, using clogged basins to hold the acids. Working at night using electrical light, through an interesting use of grisaille and sepia tones, she began making prints. These astonishing, ripping, and intese prints, later were to travel to an exhibition that took place simultaneously in West and East Germany in 1983, supported by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.

Lalitha Lajmi's works are held in collections in the National Gallery of Modern Art and the CSMVS Museum in India, and the British Museum.