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Shooting star
The work of Homai Vyarawalla, India's first woman photojournalist, is the subject of a new book. An encounter with the trailblazer, and her work
When India was fighting for freedom, Homai Vyarawalla was already liberated. She became India's first woman photojournalist in 1939. Sixty-seven years later, she has pulled off another first-at 92, she is the oldest woman in India to have her work chronicled in a book.
 India in Focus-Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla is history in black and white. Published by Parzor, a UNESCO project, it was released in Delhi on 25 February. Written by documentary filmmaker Sabina Gadihoke, the book records Vyarawalla's work from 1939 to 1970, in outstanding images captured with her Rolleiflex and later Speedgraphic, cameras "as huge as my head". "I shot anything that was interesting," says Vyarawalla. She was a regular contributor to Onlooker magazine, which covered social events in Bombay. She also photographed beggars, and British women training as ambulance drivers during World War II for The Illustrated Weekly of India.
Vyarawalla's love for photography began with the Rolleiflex, which was gifted to her husband Maneckshaw, an accountant with The Times of India in Bombay. With the help of magazines like Popular Photography, Vyarawalla taught herself the art and went on to contribute photographs to the newspaper. In 1942, the Vyarawallas moved to Delhi-and she got herself a job as full-time photographer with The Times. Dressed in a sari, with two huge camera bags slung across her shoulders, Vyarawalla rode her bicycle around Delhi, chasing stories at odd hours. "When I was lost, I would ring the nearest doorbell for directions," she recalls with a chuckle. A few years later, after several saris were torn by colleagues stepping on them, she switched to salwar kameez.
Her favourite subject was the "gracious" Jawaharlal Nehru. Among the few photographs that Vyarawalla has on display in her sitting room in a small first-floor flat in Vadodara's suburban Nizampura is one of Nehru embracing his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, whose face is partially covered. "People think the woman is me!" she says, adding, "The appreciation of people like Nehru made a world of difference in the professional relationship." Vyarawalla's sense of timing and her eye for a telling image earned her an iconic status.
However, in 1970, she decided to quit photography. "My colleagues were gentlemen but the new lot did not know how to behave," she says. "There was also the menace of security that started with Mrs Indira Gandhi. Photographers were treated with scant respect." Her decision showed strength of character, a quality that resurfaced years later in 1988 when she prayed to God to take away her only son suffering from cancer. She looks you in the eye when she talks about quitting photography, leaving Delhi after her husband's death, and living alone. And she is unfazed about disappearing from public memory in 1970.
Now, Vyarawalla lives alone in her flat-without even a phone. She does all the chores, tends to her small garden, stitches her own clothes, and even drives her black Fiat to the market. "Everyone should develop hobbies for the time when our work is no longer the centre of our world," is her take. Her world consists of a couple of friends in Vadodara
and some in Pilani, with whom she corresponds regularly. "My life is isolated but I am proud to be independent," she says, with conviction.
-Sandhya Bordewekar
 (Left) Governor-General of India Lord Louis Mountbatten takes the final salute at the Guard of Honour at Rashtrapati Bhavan, just before heading back to England on 21 June 1948. Standing next to him is Lady Edwina.
 (Top) Cabaret dancers perform at a restaurant in Connaught Place. This was part of the Independence celebration in 1947.
(Anti-clockwise from left) This is one of Vyarawalla's widely published images which also reveals her sense of timing. Nehru is waiting at Palam Airport to receive his sister Vijaylakshmi Pandit, who was then India's ambassador to Russia. Vyarawalla took the picture when the person who was talking to Nehru moved away to expose the sign board.
As part of tradition, hundreds of folk dancers who came to New Delhi to participate in the Republic Day Parade were invited to garden parties by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan and the Prime Minister at Teen Murti. These performers often attended the parties in their regional costumes and broke into impromptu song and dance. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had no inhibitions and would often join in.
On a pleasant winter morning, in the Moghul Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Nehru brought along his grandsons, Rajiv (left) and Sanjay. He lost no opportunity to spend some 'free' time with his family and always found a playful way to teach the boys about nature and other subjects.
 This photograph is not taken by Vyarawalla. In fact, she's seen here (in salwar kameez) shooing off hangers-on who were trying to get into the frame. On special occasions like birthdays, selected photographers were invited to shoot polictical leaders. In this photograph, Indira Gandhi was posing for the cameras on her birthday. About hangers-on, Vyarawalla says, "These people were a big nusisance. Many a time, we had to call the security to take them away."
In 1969, Jacqueline Kennedy was on a private visit to spend nine days at Teen Murti with the Nehru-Gandhi family. Here, she poses with Mrs Indira Gandhi to oblige photographers.
Featured in Harmony Magazine
March 2006
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