On January 15, a most extraordinary woman passed away at 98. Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman press photographer died of respiratory complications aggravated by a fractured hipbone. Exactly a week before, she had attended a felicitation organised by the Parsi community in Vadodara.

The evening was cold and windy, but she refused to cover her head. When after the hip fracture she had to leave for the hospital, she insisted on packing her own suitcase despite the excruciating pain. That was Homai Vyarawalla, proudly self reliant till the very end.
Homai was born in 1913 in Navsari, Gujarat and educated in Bombay at St. Xavier’s College and the JJ School of Arts. She was 13 when she met Manekshaw, her future husband and closest companion till he died in 1969. Manekshaw was the one who introduced Homai to photography and the two were consumed by this passion. They started their career as freelancers, and many of Homai’s early photographs were published under Manekshaw’s name, as magazines then were still prejudiced against women photographers. In 1942, they moved to Delhi to work for the Far Eastern Review/British Inform-ation Services, that later became the British high commission.
Homai’s vast archive of photographs chronicles the turbulent years leading to the Partition. She was one of only two photographers who shot the marathon Congress Committee meeting on June 2, 1947, where, in her words, “only a handful of people” voted for Partition. She remembers that Gandhi and Abdul Ghafar Khan were visibly upset and greeted the decision with absolute silence.
Apart from the now iconic photographs of Gandhi, Nehru and other national leaders, she also documented extensively the ordinary lives of people. Nehru was her favourite photo-subject. She recalled fondly how he posed for photographs as if caught unawares. An excellent example is one of Nehru standing in front of a sign that declares “Photography Prohibited”. Once, when the then minister of information was rude to Homai during a photo session in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Nehru walked over, took her arm and escorted her for a walk down the corridor. “Why do you waste your energy taking these mug shots?” he asked, “Do something more artistic like the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan here.”
Unlike the camera-friendly Nehru, Gandhi would complain that Homai’s camera flashes would make him blind. But most of her illustrious photo-subjects trusted her because she never misused “candid moments”, despite her conviction in that defining “split second” photograph. She was quick and agile but also patient. When others left after an event, she stayed back and waited for that rare photograph that the others would miss. In the 1998 documentary Three Women and a Camera, Homai is sharply critical of a photo taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson where Nehru, in the company of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, has an expression that could be described as comic. For Homai, preserving the essential dignity of the subject was most important. She retired from photography in 1970 when she felt that both photographers and subjects had lost their dignity.
Had Homai not been a pioneering photographer, she would still be a most remarkable woman. After the death of her husband and son, she lived alone in a small but airy apartment in Vadodara. Almost everything in that house was shaped or created by her. She built her own furniture, made her own clothes, cut her own hair, fashioned a number of useful household implements and nurtured a garden of potted plants. Deeply influenced by Gandhi, Homai believed in complete self-reliance, dignity of labour and austerity. Everything that most of us would trash was put to some use.
I first met Homai in 1997 while assisting Sabeena Gadihoke (author of the illu-strated biography, Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla) with Three Women and a Camera. Over 15 years, I watched a deep and moving friendship develop between the two women who lived in different cities and were separated in age by more than five decades. The friendship resulted in a book, many exhibitions and a number of speaking tours, including a trip to the USA and UK in 2008. Everywhere they went, Sabeena’s friends and Homai’s admirers gathered to celebrate the work and incredible spirit of Homai Vyarawalla. In 2010, Homai’s entire photographic archive was given on permanent loan to the Alkazi Foundation, Delhi.
Homai showed how life could be richly lived outside of normative family structures. The “bachelor girl” (as she called herself) had a community of friends who loved and respected her. Ms Havewallah and Jeroo Contractor were devoted friends and attentive caregivers. One of her oldest friends was neighbour Jayshree Mishra. Biren Kothari walked into her life after reading about her and remained a friend for life. He entrusted a young man, Paresh Prajapati, to check on her occasionally, who over time became like a son. Delhi-based photographer Ashim Ghosh was a longtime friend. He introduced her to champagne and gifted her a handyman’s toolkit on her 96th birthday.
Sipping a glass of beer during her visit to Delhi last year, Homai said, “My body is like a house that is broken but the person who lives inside is young.” Today, I bid farewell to this “broken house” as I carry with me into the future the truly unforgettable “young person”.

Shohini Ghosh is a professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia.