Her experiments with camera

“No, no, no. No blinding flash, not again,” shouted Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, as the Parsi photographer, a woman in her early thirties, clicked her camera using a big bulb for flash.

“Gandhiji was a trifle annoyed as he came out of a prayer meeting on that winter evening,” Homai Vyarawalla, India's first woman photojournalist, told this writer in an interview in Delhi five years ago. She died in Vadodara on Sunday at the ripe old age of 98.

Her remarks came in response to a question if she had talked to the Mahatma during her long stint in the capital. To my surprise and in a casual, matter of fact way, she said: “No, never. Yes, he scolded me once.” Then she recalled the incident that brought out her character as a thorough professional who kept a distance from her subjects and refused to be over-awed into hero worshipping.

Is it true you missed Mahatma's assassination?

Conflicting emotions

“Yes, most regrettably. I remember I had planned to go to the prayer meeting on that fateful day. As I prepared to go to Birla House that evening, my husband hurriedly called me back, suggesting we go for the next day's prayer meeting. When I received the terrible news, I was stunned and struck by conflicting emotions. As an individual, I was deeply saddened by the assassination. At the same time, my professional self agonised over not being on the spot, though being so near. My husband wouldn't forgive himself for calling me back.”

Vyarawalla's old world camera had captured men and women of destiny — from Lord Mountbatten to Marshall Tito, from Queen Elizabeth to Jacqueline Kennedy, from Khrushchev to Kosygin, from Eisenhower to Nixon, Atlee, Nasser, Chou En Lai and a host of others, who charted the course of history during the 20th century.

Her pictures are not only historical, but also funny and irreverent in good measure. For example, savour the one that shows Nehru on the field outside the Palam runway beside a signboard with the legend “Photography strictly prohibited.” She shot as Nehru was awaiting the arrival of the Moscow flight carrying his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, India's ambassador to the Soviet Union.

An inadvertently irreverent picture is that of Nehru seemingly pulling at the beard of the Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh. In fact, Nehru is introducing him to someone with his left hand pointing to the bearded dignitary and that appears as if he is pulling at the beard. For long, Vyarawalla did not display the photo, lest it should show Nehru as being inelegant.

Professional and dedicated

“On another occasion, I had hurt my lips and it was bandaged while I attended some ceremony. Dr Radhakrishnan, who was present on the occasion, scratched his lip at the point where I had the bandage. ‘Did your husband bite you?', asked the philosopher-president with a twinkle in his eyes as he passed me by after the ceremony.”

A lone woman in the midst of men of varying temperaments, Vyarawalla kept her dignity intact. “I was very stern — no hanky-panky and no unnecessary smiling which could be misconstrued. I would stand in a corner watchfully, taking pictures as the opportunities came.”

Despite her credentials of fame and celebrity status, Vyarawalla never went abroad. K. Natarajan, 90, a veteran press photographer in Delhi, is perhaps the only living contemporary of Vyarawalla. “She was a great professional and dedicated to her work. She was also friendly and warm-hearted. On my request, she came and took my wedding photos in Delhi in January 1952,” Natarajan, who is still active, remembers.