Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photo journalist passes away

Vadodara, 15 January 2012

India’s first woman photo journalist Homai Vyarawalla passed away today morning in Vadodara due to illness. She died in Balaji hospital in city’s Subhanpura area. She was hospitalized after she fell down from ladder on Thursday in her house.

Born on 9 December 1913 in Navsari Homai was presented highest civilian award Padma Vibhushan by government of India in 2011. She was first active in the late 1930s, she retired in the early 1970s.

Her father was an actor in an itinerant Urdu-Parsi theatre troupe. Homai grew up in Bombay, where she was the only girl in her class to complete her matriculation examination. Vyarawalla studied at the Bombay University and the Sir JJ School of Art.

Beginning her career with the Bombay Chronicle during World War II, she moved to Delhi as the Indian representative of the British Information Services. Thus began the most productive phase of her career, which continued unhindered till she voluntarily decided to call it a day.

After moving to Delhi where in next 30 years she clicked many political and national leaders including Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi Lord Mountbatten to Marshall Tito, Queen Elizabeth, Jacqueline Kennedy, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Eisenhower , Nixon, Atlee, Nasser, Chou En Lai among others while working as news photographer. She worked in The illustrated weekly of India till 1970. She moved back to Vadodara in 1973 after demise of her husband Maneckshaw.

Many do not know that Nehru was a chain-smoker. We get a very interesting glimpse of Nehru in a relaxed and informal mood with a burning cigarette on his lips, in Homai’s photograph. This photograph shows Nehru lighting a cigarette on the lips of Ms. Simon, wife of the then British High Commissioner to India. The photograph was taken inside the BOAC Boeing on its inaugural flight to London from New Delhi.