Homai Vyarawala captured life of a nation in transition

Ahmedabad: She may have lived alone in anonymity, but through her pictures, India's first woman photojournalist Homai Vyarawala captured the social and political life of a nation in transition.

Her work, capturing the pre and post-independent India, has contributed to a certain nationalist iconography.

Vyarawala, who was awarded the Padma Vibhushan last January, died today at a private hospital in Vadodara city at the age of 98.

Her work that spanned four decades included both the euphoria of the Independence as well as the disillusionment with undelivered promises in the new nation state.

She was the only professional woman photojournalist between 1939 and 1970, as she survived the male-dominated field, making her presence more significant because of the codes of this profession that largely continue to exclude women even today.

Born on December 9, 1913 to a Parsi family in Navsari town of south Gujarat, she grew up in Mumbai and moved to Delhi in 1942, where she photographed events leading to Independence as an employee of the British Information Services. She had studied at the Mumbai University and the J J School of Arts.

Vyarawala shot her first photo in 1938 - a picnic party of women from the Women's Club in Mumbai. Her first published pictures were in the 'Bombay Chronicle', which paid her one rupee for every photograph.

Her earliest pictures that documented the efforts of women to provide utility services, were against the backdrop of the World War II, where one can see images of feisty young women dressed in saris, with the then long-sleeved blouses, participating in air raid protection mock drills organised to train the public.

The wide tree-lined streets in Delhi's Connaught Place, a striking aerial view of the Rajpath on India's first Independence Day, a group of gleeful women going to vote during the country's first general election - Vyarawala's pictures capture the social and political life of a nation in transition.