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Camera Ch ro n icle s of HOM A I V YA R A W A L L A
India’s first woman press photographer, Homai Vyarawalla captured the last days of the British Empire. Her work also traces the birth and growth of a new nation. The story of Homai’s life and her professional career spans an entire century of Indian history. Belonging to the small Parsi community of India, Homai was born in 1913 into a middle class home in Navsari, Gujarat. Her father was an actor in a travelling UrduParsi theatre company and Homai grew up in Bombay. She was the only girl in her class to complete her matriculation examination. Having learnt photography from Maneckshaw, whom she married later, Homai was to spend nearly three decades of her career in Delhi. The great value of Homai’s work lies in her vast collection of photographs that archive the nation in transition, documenting both the euphoria of Independence as well as disappointment with its undelivered promises. She was the only professional woman photojournalist in India during her time and her survival in a male-dominated field is all the more significant because the profession continues to exclude most women even today. Ironically, Western photojournalists who visited India such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Margaret Bourke-White have received more attention than their Indian contemporaries. In an already invisible history, Homai Vyarawalla’s presence as a woman was even more marginalized. Published in the year that she received India's first National Photo Award for Lifetime Achievement, this edition pays tribute to her indomitable spirit and her contribution to early photojournalism in India. With 54 photographs in colour and 450 in duotone Jacket: Front: Homai Vyarawalla with her Speed Graphic Camera on her shoulder. Back: The Dalai Lama, photographed by Homai Vyarawalla, entering India for the first time through Sikkim in 1956.
Cam e r a C h r o n i c l e s
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Cam e r aof C h ro n i c l e s HOM A I V YA R A W A L L A
Sabeena Gadihoke
Mapin Publishing in association with
Parzor Foundation
Alkazi Foundation for the Arts
With no one to guide me in my formative years I had to depend solely on my own instincts to plan out my future. The credit for all that I was able to achieve goes to my very supportive mother, who despite criticism from the orthodox, as well as financial constraints, allowed me all freedom to do what I thought was best for me. Another very important person in my life—my husband—not only encouraged me to take on the exclusive male dominated profession of press photography, but also shared, on an equal basis, the burden of balancing family with professional life to our entire satisfaction. I salute them both and dedicate all my life’s work to those loving souls. Homai Vyarawalla July13th, 2005
This edition produced in conjunction with Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective, a collaborative exhibition organised by E. Alkazi, Chairman of Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, and Rajeev Lochan, Director of NGMA, from August 27 to October 31, 2010; curated by Sabeena Gadihoke Published in 2010 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd in association with National Gallery of Modern Art Parzor Foundation Alkazi Foundation for the Arts First published in 2006 as a UNESCO-Parzor Publication by Parzor Foundation in association with Mapin Publishing Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd 502 Paritosh, Next to Darpana Academy Usmanpura Riverside, Ahmedabad 380013 INDIA T: 91 79 4022 8228 • F: 91 79 4022 8201 E: mapin@mapinpub.com www.mapinpub.com National Gallery of Modern Art Jaipur House, India Gate New Delhi 110003 INDIA T: 91 11 2338 2835 Email: info@ngmaindia.gov.in www.ngmaindia.gov.in
Simultaneously published in the United States of America in 2010 by Grantha Corporation 77 Daniele Drive, Hidden Meadows Ocean Township, NJ 07712 E: mapin@mapinpub.com Distributors North America Antique Collectors’ Club, New York T: 1 800 252 5231 • F: 1 413 529 0862 E: info@antiquecc.com www.antiquecollectorsclub.com United Kingdom and Europe Marston Book Services Ltd. Oxon, UK T: 44 1235 465 578 • F: 44 1235 465 555
Text © Parzor Foundation Photographs © The Alkazi Collection of Photography All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-81-89995-46-1 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-935677-07-9 (Grantha) LC: 2005935735 Designed by Paulomi Shah / Mapin Design Studio Processed by Reproscan, Mumbai Printed in India
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Page 3 Homai Vyarawalla on a shoot in Chambal Valley. Photograph taken by her colleague, Amarnath.
Contents
Acknowledgements
6
Prologue
7
The Birth of a Princess
8
“Bombay, the Beautiful”
22
“Parsi kya cheez hai?”—”What is a Parsi?”
48
The Birth of a Nation
56
The World of Black and White
92
Euphoria and Undelivered Promises
108
“A New Phenomenon among this Rough Crowd”
166
A Home Away from Home
178
Moving On
212
Homai Kabadiwala and Friendly Ghosts
220
Glossary
230
References
231
Acknowledgements My greatest debt is to Homai Vyarawalla for inspiration, patience and reposing trust in me. Without her generous sharing and warm hospitality over two long years this book would not have been completed. I hope that in some measure it makes up for the many disruptions that the project has caused in her otherwise tranquil life. I thank Dr. Shernaz Cama for making this book possible. I am also grateful to the Parzor Foundation and the UNESCO-Parzor project for funding my research. This publication was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India to whom I am extremely thankful. I first started to work on Homai Vyarawalla in 1998, as part of a study on women photographers in India, that was funded by India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore. Thanks are also due to Bipin Shah, Paulomi Shah and Janki Sutaria at Mapin, Ahmedabad.
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There are others upon whom I have depended for intellectual and emotional support. Shohini Ghosh, my colleague and friend for all seasons, for a first critical reading, for taking over some of my responsibilities with teaching, and for being supportive in all kinds of ways. My other ‘family’, Ranjani Mazumdar, Shikha Jhingan and Sabina Kidwai, for suggestions and many helpful chats around the book. Alan Ross-Guy, for pushing me to meet Homai in the summer of 2000. I would never have managed to complete this book without my mother, Shashi Gadihoke, taking over completely on the home front. I also gained immensely from Sunday morning chats with my father Vice Admiral (Retd.) S.M. Gadihoke P.V.S.M. and ‘mamaji’ (Satpal Behl), who also read parts of the manuscript and helped fill in the gaps of an era that was unfamiliar to me. My deep gratitude to Sarita Handa, for being friend and mentor through good times and bad. In Baroda, I would like to thank Mrs. Vyarawalla's friend and neighbour Jayshree Mishra for her warmth and helpfulness. To Nandini Manjrekar, Naina, Chitrangada Mitra and Shankar Mitra, my deepest gratitude, for making Baroda more pleasurable and hospitable. The genesis of the book lies in Three Women and a Camera (1998), a documentary I made on three women photographers including Homai Vyarawalla. I owe a debt of gratitude to the other two protagonists of the film, Dayanita Singh and Sheba Chhachi, for their support to the project.
The research for this book was aided by work at the libraries of Teen Murti and the Press Information Bureau. Homai’s interviews over the past seven years were transcribed by Payal Radhawa, Ghazala Amin, Ambarean Al Qadar, Shakeb Ahmad, Rabiya Jairam and Khadeeja Arif. I am grateful to Madan Mehta at Mahattas studios for printing Homai’s negatives. I also owe thanks to Kailash Dilwali, Aditya Arya, Shyam Benegal, Ivy Lerner-Frank, Kitty Tawakley, Tanika Sarkar, Joy Michael, Bhaskar Ghosh, Narayani Gupta, Usha Bhagat, Lt. General (Retd.) Adi Sethna, Padma Bhushan, P.V.S.M., A.V.S.M., Khorshed Sethna, Iffat Fatima, and Homai’s contemporaries T. Mathra and N. Thiagarajan for clarifying so many small details that a book is made up of. The manuscript has greatly benefited from the inputs of Shernaz Cama, who also edited the book. Needless to say, I am grateful to photographer Satish Sharma for doggedly pursuing a trail and persuading Homai Vyarawalla to emerge from her life of anonymity in 1989. When I started to work on this book, I wrote to Homai’s friends all over the world, all of whom responded. I am particularly grateful to Omana Jacob and Sima Bose for all their helpful dispatches. I am deeply touched by the interest shown in the book by Lorna Clift in Punchbowl, Sydney and for sending me the correspondence between Homai and her late father Hugh McInnes, who I know would have loved to read this book. Thanks are also due to Mr. R.P. Perera and Ambreen Ali-Shah at UNESCO, New Delhi; Hemant Mehta, Dushyant Mehta, Abhilasha Kumari, Ras Behari Das, Yaaminey Mubayi, Niloufer Shroff, Jehangir Cama, Jameela Verghese, Kapila Vatsyayan, Ashok Dilwali, Kety and Keki Pavri, Merzban Khajotia, Rumy Mistry, C.S. Lakshmi, Yogesh Nigam and Vinod Kaul. I am grateful to my workplace, the A.J.K. Mass Communication Research Centre, at Jamia University and to its Director Dr. Iftekhar Ahmad for giving me short periods of leave to write this book. I was greatly encouraged in this project by my former Director and friend, the late Dr. Habeeb Kidwai. I will miss his gentle presence when this book is released. This book took two years to complete because of the commitments of a full-time teaching job. My home became my haven during this time, where I would lock myself away and work. My final debt, by no means small, is to the family of cats who solemnly and silently watched over me as I wrote this manuscript. Sabeena Gadihoke July 2nd, 2005
Prologue
“It was after fifty years of having taken these pictures that I started to see the value of my work. I was just earning a living at that time with no thought of preserving it for posterity. Once you had said I would be remembered for it. Remembered by whom? In a country where a great man like Gandhiji has been forgotten, why would I be remembered? I couldn’t care less. All I want today is for people, especially the young, to see what it was like to live in those days. It was a different kind of world altogether. I want people to get a glimpse of that.” Homai Vyarawalla, March 2005
She was fifty-seven when she decided to quit. Nobody seemed interested in her photographs any longer. For twenty-three years, this treasure remained locked away in cupboards and boxes. In the early eighties, during a move between cities, she packed all her best negatives into a box. The box was lost in transit and has never been found again. Thinking that there was no use for them, she burnt some of her other prints and negatives and threw away some of her movie footage. Meanwhile, she ran a home and grew a beautiful garden in far away Pilani. One day, many years later, a Delhi-based photographer noticed the name of a woman among a long list of men in the Press Information Bureau records. He kept inquiring about her and by coincidence met her at a camera repair shop in Delhi. That was how Homai Vyarawalla was found again.
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The President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, greeting Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of Britain, as Homai and other photographers capture them on camera, 1958. “President Radhakrishan called me ‘Princess’, General Cariappa called me ‘Energy’ and Rajaji said I was ‘A new phenomenon’. People called me all sorts of names. They used to be happy when they saw me.”
THE BIRTH OF A PRINCESS
“I hadn’t the slightest clue that I would be a photographer. I wanted to be a doctor but that was the only time in my life that my mother refused to let me do something. She had seen doctors on late night shifts and didn’t want me in a profession like that. Little did she realize that Press photography would be far worse! I also wanted to be a Girl Guide but she didn’t want that either. In those days Girl Guides had to wear uniforms and coming from an orthodox Parsi family, that was a problem for me. As a child, I once saw a photograph of another child lying on its stomach. I was told that it was taken by a woman and wondered if I would ever get a chance like that.” Homai Vyarawalla
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n the 9th of December 1913, a baby girl was born to Dossabhai Hathiram and Soonamai. When she turned two, an astrologer in Navsari predicted, “Raj Rajwade mein ghoomegi”—“She is destined to walk among royalty and important people.” This forecast seemed incredible to a family that had always been faced with hardship. Dossabhai led an uncertain life as an actor-director in a travelling Parsi theatre company when he married Soonamai, twenty years his junior. It was the second time that both had married. Dossabhai was not to live to see India turn Independent. He was also not to see his only daughter, Homai Vyarawalla, become its first woman press photographer. Homai’s father, popularly known as “bade mian”, had originally trained himself to be an artist and painted on glass. In those days painting was not a paying profession and so he left home at an early age, to become an actor instead. Urdu Parsi theatre had been very popular from the mid-nineteenth
Shaking hands with Dorothy Macmillan, the wife of the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, in 1958.
With the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. John Diefenbaker.
century, but by the early thirties it had to contend with the talkies in cinema.1 Dossabhai was known to be very handsome and would often play female roles. Homai recalls a story about a wealthy Nawab being quite infatuated with him. Watching their rehearsals, she soon became fluent in Urdu and once did a perfect rendition of a part in which a Muslim actress was having difficulty. A fellow Parsi watching this warned Dossabhai of the influence of the theatre on his daughter. From that day, Homai was banned from attending their rehearsals. Acting was not an option then for Parsi women from “respectable” homes. Dossabhai had directed some plays and even acted in the cinema. One of Homai’s earliest memories of the Khatau Company, where he worked, was playing with brushes and canvas among gigantic sets; “Those were my toys.” The Parsi theatre was known then for its spectacular and innovative sets and its technical wizardry.2 ”I remember a grand set of a street scene that had houses on two sides of the road. One of the balconies was on fire and had a woman shouting for help. My father had to throw a rope across and swing through the air to rescue his love. It was all very elaborate and to me as a child looked startlingly real!” Life was fairly nomadic for Homai in the early years of her childhood. As a baby she had travelled with her father’s troupe, performing all over the country as well as in Singapore, Ceylon, Malaysia and Burma. Due to the uncertainty of their home life, her two brothers were sent to live with their grandparents in Bombay. When Homai turned seven, Soonamai shifted to a Parsi mohalla in Tardeo, Bombay, with all the three children. Homai’s parents came from priestly families in Navsari and Surat. As a child, she did not have much contact with her father’s side of the family, but every year they would visit
Soonamai’s sister, Khorshedbanu’s home in Navsari where Homai’s uncle, Dastoor Kaikobad Mehrjirana, was the Head Priest. Here they would perform the annual rituals for their dead relatives in the days before Pateti and the Parsi New Year. Soonamai would help her sister make the food and sweets for the daily offering. Three of Soonamai’s brothers were also panthakis of fire temples. The family celebrity then was Dossabhai’s nephew, Gustad M. Hathiram, who had set out to cycle around the world in the early twenties with four other friends. He never returned to tell his story and so there was always a mystery around Gustad. According to some sources he was killed by robbers in the U.S.A. Others claimed that he was alive but ashamed to return to India, as he had not completed his journey. It was an intriguing story for Homai, which was finally laid to rest recently when his cousin, Kety Maneck Chena, in Bombay clarified that he passed away in Florida in 1973. A Westernized community, middle class Parsis eagerly sought English education. Dossabhai and Soonamai had not studied much but they were keen that their daughter learn English. Since Homai knew only Urdu, she was enrolled in the Grant Road High School run by Rustomji Bhesania. Despite its Gujarati antecedents, the school was cosmopolitan. Here Homai studied with Hindus, Muslims and other Parsis. The English language was compulsory and anyone caught speaking in Gujarati was punished and asked to write: “I will not speak in Gujarati, I must speak in English,” a hundred times. When rents in Tardeo soared, the family had to shift further away to Andheri. The children travelled to school now by steam train. Homai recalls carrying her return fare of two annas between the pages of her books. Fountain pens had yet to make an entry and so they
had to carry a cumbersome inkstand for their pens to be dipped in ink. It took almost an hour to travel from the Andheri station to Grant Road. All the compartments of the train had long benches and as children they would walk up and down buying fresh food from travelling vendors. They specially loved adventures in the monsoons when the tracks would get flooded, and the train would be stranded for hours. Homai learnt to be comfortable in male company very early in life. There were just six or seven girls at her school and by the time she reached her Matriculation, she was the only girl in a class of thirty-five boys. Unlike other more affluent fellow students who came in dresses, Homai would attend school dressed in a sari with a mathubanu covering her hair.3 Of course, she would pull it off as soon as she climbed down the stairs of her mother’s flat. “I was thirteen and going out with the mathubanu made me feel like an old woman! All the other girls at school would come in frocks and skirts and I was the only one in a sari. Every Parsi woman who wore the sari had to have a mathubanu as that was one way of keeping the head covered. My mother said, if I wanted to go out anywhere, I would have to wear it. We used to live on the second floor in Wadia Street in Tardeo. As I went down the stairs, I would remove my mathubanu and put it in my bag. The other thing that I hid was the sudreh.4 We all wore the sudreh and kusti.5 To make a distinction between the Parsis and the Hindus, all Parsi women had to show their sudreh from under the blouse and so net sudrehs and other decorated ones were in fashion. While going down I would also fold up my sudreh into my blouse. I had to remember to let both these items show when I got back home. If I ever teased my elder brother, he would say, ‘Mummy ko keh doonga ki yeh sudreh andar
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lagaati hai, bahar nahi rakhti hai’—’I will tell mother that you fold up your sudreh under your blouse’ and everything would be all right between us! I would never complain against my brother. It was something I had to do in order to get an education.”6
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Another more traumatic and embarrassing restriction that all Parsi girls at schools and colleges had to encounter in those days was the practice of door besvanu.7 “Every month during their menstrual period, women of the family had to experience untouchability in its extreme form. Each household had a separate corner or a room on the ground floor where women had to move in for the days of their period. The space had only an iron bed and separate utensils for eating and drinking. Bathing or leaving the room during this time was forbidden. This practice kept girls away from schools and colleges, causing severe disruptions in their studies.” Eventually, educational institutions took up the matter Below: This hand-tinted photograph dated 1917–18 is the only image of Homai’s childhood. Below, right: When Homai and her husband were learning photography, Maneckshaw created a trick image of an adolescent Homai seated next to herself as a child.
Left: Dossabhai Hathiram dressed in costume for a performance in 1932. Below: Homai inherited her father’s love for acting and played the role of Jehanara, the sister of Aurangzeb, in a public performance by the students of J.J. School of Arts, Bombay.
Homai’s grandmother, Avanmai Mullan, with the mathubanu.
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Homai, aged fifteen, cooking. “We moved from house to house in Bombay, depending on our financial situation. This photograph was taken in the Chatriwala building in Tardeo where five of us lived in one room. Life was difficult in those days. We had our kitchen and bathing space in the same room and had to fetch water from a tap at the end of the corridor. When the rents got too high, we shifted to Andheri and I would catch the 6.30 a.m. train to Grant Road for school. I had to complete most of the housework before that as my mother suffered from chronic asthma. My brother and I fetched water from a well in the fire temple compound and we had to climb up a hillside to go to the toilet. We shifted back to Tardeo (Slater Road) from Andheri. Just before our marriage, Maneckshaw moved in with us and shared the rent of forty-five rupees. We always lived in rented houses. Initially we didn’t even have an almirah and lived like hermits with trunks and folding beds. It was only later when both Maneckshaw and I were earning, that we were able to furnish the house gradually.”
Homai with Soonamai in 1936. This picture was taken in Victoria Gardens by Maneckshaw.
Homai wearing the “skirt-like sari” at Chowpatti Beach, Bombay.
and with protests from other more enlightened representatives of the community, it was phased out. Coming from a priestly background, Homai had to be seen to follow the tradition, but she found innovative ways to circumvent the rules.8 “My mother would give me all kinds of home preparations to reduce my periods and I would gulp those down, but I had my own agenda and she didn’t know that. I would adjust my periods according to my school schedule. I would also reduce the number of days in order to get out of the house. My poor mother was constantly worrying about my ‘irregular’ cycle!”
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Parsi girls in Homai’s school wore silk in those days as they were forbidden to take part in politics. “Gandhi’s call for swadeshi was all around us and anything in khadi signified the nationalist movement.” Homai would stitch her own blouses and she shared six saris with her mother. A widow, Soonamai wore a black sari most of the time and hardly stepped out of the house, so Homai would manage with the rest. They bought cloth from stacks in Bhuleshwar where it was sold by weight, each piece costing a few annas. “It was my job every Sunday to wash the saris, change the borders and to sometimes stitch a matching blouse with four or six annas worth of cloth. Everyone thought I was a well-dressed person. Once I didn’t have a petticoat to wear under my sari. I was lucky because it was suddenly a fashion then to wear a sari like a skirt without any gathering in the front. It meant I could wrap my sari around twice and didn’t need a petticoat!” Soonamai suffered from chronic asthma all her life. She would spin the woollen thread used for weaving the kusti, sometimes working through the night to earn some extra money. “Despite this, we were always short of money and she would often need to pawn her gold bangles.” The bangles travelled up and down from the
pawnshop for most of her life. Homai’s growing years were frugal but not impossible. She recalls how she would carry two annas to the butcher’s shop for mutton bones. These would be boiled and made into very tasty curries. The fact that there was no adulteration helped: “Eating less, but genuine good food kept us healthy.” The family never took money from any of the numerous Parsi charities. In fact, Homai still has a strong disapproval of Parsi dependency on charity and feels that it encouraged the community to be lazy and complacent. In school Homai became good friends with a Parsi girl, Dhun Alamshah, who had lost her mother and lived with an aunt who did not treat her too well. One day Homai had a vivid dream about her. They were chatting on the second floor balcony of their school, when a ten-rupee note slipped from Dhun’s hand. The money was gone by the time they ran downstairs. Dhun was stricken, as this was the money for her school fees. In order to save the situation, Homai asks her boyfriend Maneckshaw for ten rupees and hands it over to Dhun. The very next day, her dream played out in reality, in exactly the same way. Maneckshaw came to their aid and Dhun was able to pay her fees. These spiritual “interventions” were to become a recurrent feature in Homai’s life. Unfortunately, Dhun was not to live long and died at the age of eighteen. Homai was indebted to several people for her own education. When her school fee was increased to seven rupees, she went to meet the headmaster and offered to drop out. Rustomji Bhesania made an exception for his favourite student and Homai had to pay only three rupees and eight annas as her fee for the rest of her school life. Of course, she earned this by offering tuitions to other
students in classes lower than hers for which she was paid rupees twenty a month by him. Rustomji had great faith in Homai and when teachers were absent, he would ask her to take classes for them. Years later, when Homai moved to Delhi, she would often try to meet Rustomji on her visits to Bombay. “We met just once in 1948. I was told that he had retired and had lost his memory. I had cut my hair and looked different but decided that I would still go and see him. When I stood at the door and said, ‘Mr. Bhesania, yaad hai main kaun hoon?’—‘Mr. Bhesania, do you remember who I am?’ he immediately said, ‘Homai Hathiram’. He remembered both my names. I went in and sat with him and introduced my son to him and he talked to me about all those old times. Nothing seemed to be wrong with his memory. Before leaving, I hugged him and it was so heartwarming. He had grown so old and feeble. I am glad I met him, because a month later he was gone.” Rustomji was not her only benefactor. Her parents had once helped a young Parsi boy called Homi Dastoor by letting him stay with them in Tardeo, while he was completing his studies. In turn, Homi helped Homai get aid for her college fees from a Parsi Trust. It was Homi who filled up all her forms and applied for the fellowship. She never saw him after that. Despite her middle class background, Homai feels she was lucky to get opportunities that she could never have dreamt of. At St. Xavier’s College, she would watch two boys play tennis and one of them loaned her his racquet. After practising with his friend, she was soon winning tennis tournaments in college and at her Arts school. Homai’s brothers were less fortunate. Unlike her, they could not get scholarships and had to finally drop out of school. “Their studies had already been neglected because of living
Be-Naam’e Khuda – In the name of God.
Gustad Hathiram, the cyclist. (Photograph courtesy: Kety Maneck Chena)
away from my mother and they couldn’t pass their Matriculation examination. The older one, Homi, learnt English for a while with Rustomji Bhesania, but family pressures forced him to take up a job in the Mechanical Department of the Petit Mills in Tardeo. Siavak also got a job in the weaving mills and later in Voltas and they remained in these jobs for the rest of their lives.” The monotony of working in a profession that they didn’t really enjoy was relieved by theatre. Like Dossabhai they loved acting and both were amateur performers in Gujarati plays in Bombay. Homi, who was married briefly, would mostly play female roles. Dossabhai could not live to see his sons follow his passion. He was finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet and his problems were compounded by the rivalry
May you always be happy my dear daughter Homai. I am happy to read the good news [about your passing your matriculation]. I give you blessings from the bottom of my heart. My congratulations and I wish you luck. If you have the consent of your mother to take the help of Homi Dastoor [she had written to him about Homi’s offer to help her with college fees and books through a Trust] then I am very happy for you to get all this. I am giving you permission to get his help. I am very sorry that I have not been able to do anything for you. The very day I received your letter and was reading about the joyous news of your passing, I also got information from the owner that our theatre company is winding up. Now I am waiting for them to make arrangements to pay me. If they ever do pay me, because once a company winds up everybody forgets to pay up. But you don’t worry, God willing, things will be all right. I wish to God that you and your mother and two brothers live in peace and happiness. Your loving father
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Far above: Dossabhai’s letter to Homai. Above: “My father was completely self taught and had wonderful handwriting.”
Dossabhai with an actor from the film industry.
Left: Dossabhai Hathiram’s passport.
The last letter written by Dossabhai to his daughter.
and intrigue among theatre companies. It is said that he was given mercury in paan and that destroyed his voice. In 1931, Homai wrote to tell him about passing her Matriculation examination. In a poignant reply, Dossabhai blessed her, but expressed his inability to send her any money to continue with her studies. He had got the news that very day that his company was shutting down. Penniless, he had also contracted a serious illness in Burma. His last letter to her was more anguished: “In your letter [to me] there is no mention of your mother at all. Is she also angry with me? Whom can I share my difficulties with? I had started homeopathy medicines. It is nearly twenty days now and they have had no effect. More than half the number of people here [in the company] are stranded for lack of money...The manager doesn’t seem to stay in Rangoon...How can I ask him for money when he is in trouble as well...I will try as soon as I can manage to see if you can travel [to Burma], with a third class passenger on the ship. I can’t travel third class, as it is difficult for me to sit on the wooden planks due to my illness. For the second class, I need one hundred and twenty-five rupees. It costs the same by rail.... Tell your mother that I wrote to Jehangir Khatau [the owner of the company] about ten days back and he has not even cared to reply. So I can’t have any faith in him. If you try to raise money [on interest] from somewhere then it will be like death to me. I would rather prefer to die. Don’t worry about me. I am hoping that something may crop up by the end of the month. I can survive here on whatever money I have. If I came back to India, I would just be a burden on you. I live in the hope that Khatau will make arrangements for me to reach Bombay somehow. Do write at least one letter every month....”
Maneckshaw’s friend, who had visited Rangoon, brought news that Dossabhai was seriously unwell. When he finally managed to raise the money to return, it was too late. He died a week or two after a surgery at the J.J. Hospital in Bombay. Homai was only seventeen. As desired by Dossabhai, Soonamai consented to Homai’s college education. She was not schooled much herself but understood the worth of education. Homai is very grateful to her mother for giving her the freedom to grow: “My mother couldn’t have helped me in any other way except for allowing me to do whatever I wanted to do in life. She never stopped me in spite of financial difficulties. She never said ‘I don’t have money for you.’ She would dig out money somehow—even for the littlest of things.” Others in the family would talk about the freedom given to Homai in disapproving whispers. After all, good Parsi women, like all others, were meant to get married when they came of age. In contrast, not only did Homai go to college, but she also had a boyfriend at the age of thirteen! Homai first met Maneckshaw in 1926 at a railway station. They were distantly related and he was in Bombay to take his Matriculation examination. An aunt, with whom he was staying, suggested that Homai take his help for her Maths paper. During one of these lessons Maneckshaw slipped in a note proposing to Homai and asking her if she liked him. The attraction was mutual and so the station became a meeting point for both of them from then onwards. It was a happy ending for both the lovers, but not for the aunt who had her eye on Maneckshaw for her own daughter! Homai owes her initial interest in photography to Maneckshaw. In days prior to any formal training in the subject, both were self-
taught, picking up tips from popular photography journals and Kodak and Agfa pamphlets. In the absence of any proper photographic facilities, Maneckshaw would experiment with developing films. The fourposter bed covered in blankets in Vyara, where he spent his childhood, was his darkroom. He would make contact prints on P.O.P. paper using sunlight and would send his negatives to Kodak in Bombay or Surat for making enlargements. “In Bombay, the bathroom became our darkroom. I would have one hand in the developer and the other holding a hand fan as it was so hot that both of us would be bathed in perspiration.” They glazed their prints by fixing them face down on clear glass sheets, using a roller to squeeze out the water and air bubbles. Soonamai’s charcoal stove would help dry and glaze the prints. “She would be standing guard to see that the pictures did not fall into the fire!” Most of their early pictures were taken together as they shared Maneckshaw’s Rolleiflex. Arguments about who had taken the photograph were settled easily by Homai. ”I would include him in the frame whenever possible, so that it was clear that I had taken the picture!” Determined to study further, Homai enrolled for a degree in Economics at St. Xaviers in Bombay. After taking money from the Parsi charity for her education for two years she gave it up as she was, by then, earning enough money from photography. She also simultaneously pursued a Diploma in the Arts Teachers’ Course at the J.J. School of Arts. Maneckshaw helped subsidize her education by giving her ten rupees a month to buy brushes and other art material. Her college education, like her school, was cosmopolitan. Some of her friends at the J.J. School of Arts included Victor Fernandes, Clement D’Souza, Nargis Irani, Dosa Engineer and Rehana Mogul. College years were spent doing a lot
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Maneckshaw and Homai in 1931.
At University Gardens, August 27th, 1933.
At Vaihar Lake, October 16th, 1932. Homai’s picture (fourth from left) taken after the completion of her Bachelor of Arts degree; outside St. Xaviers College, Bombay.
Paintings made by Homai at the J.J. School of Arts.
”Most of these pictures were the result of failed and successful experiments with the Rolleiflex camera using a self-timer.”
Homai during her college years, in 1931.
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Maneckshaw and his sister Najamai in the studio.
Shirinbai with her children, Maneckshaw and Najamai.
of singing, dancing and dramatics besides painting. “The J.J. School of Arts used to have big shows for the public in theatres. There were tableaus of different kinds, like an underwater scene, and we would create the sets for them as well. I remember going to the Bhuleshwar market in Bombay, where they had all these shops selling costumes and props for the theatre. I visualized a Kathak dance performance on the theme of ‘awakening’. All the girls played the part of the lotus flowers who were woken from their sleep by the drones in the morning.” Acting was a tradition that ran in her family. Homai recalls playing Jehanara in a college play on Aurangzeb. “It wasn’t easy in those days. Do you remember Mehra Masani at All India Radio? She was the sister of Minoo Masani.
Mehra was studying at Elphinstone College and was rehearsing for a play along with some other Hindu men. When this was brought to the notice of leaders of our community, some of them like Vimadalal and Dadachanji came in open cars [convertibles] and went from mohalla to mohalla to campaign against Parsi women taking part in theatre. And she was stopped.” Homai was also passionate about the movies. “In those days our pictures got us one or two rupees per print. We would be completely broke when the money would come by the post. The first thing we did to celebrate was to go to a picture house!” Homai and Maneckshaw watched English films at Eros, Regal and Metro in Bombay. One of her
favourite films was the silent Ben-Hur (1925) with Raymon Novarro. She also enjoyed Gone with the Wind (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Les Miserables (1935) (“The one with Fredric March”), The Ten Commandments (1923) and Scarface (1932). Rudolf Valentino and Lionel Barrymore were her favourite idols. This was the era of black and white, silent cinema that was accompanied by an orchestra. The music played according to the “atmosphere” of the film. “The ‘riffraff’ who couldn’t afford proper tickets would pay four annas and sit on benches or just lie down in the ‘pit’ and shout along with the film. In fact many preferred to be near the ‘pit’ because of its entertainment value. Maneckshaw and I saw quite a few films sitting there as well! The first sound film that I saw was called Patriot. The king is murdered by his councillor, Palan, and he shouts, ‘Palan, Palan!’ That was the only sound that we heard on the screen during the entire film. They had written captions, like you saw in Charlie Chaplin’s films. I must say that the quality of acting was much better. Nowadays there is a lot more spoken word than acting. We never saw Hindi films because they looked so artificial. I didn’t like K.L. Saigal’s looks, even though he was the rage at the time because of his voice.” Maneckshaw came from Vyara in Gujarat and had lost his father when he was only a year and a half. He had an elder brother who also died early, and his sister Najamai died tragically young of snakebite. Their original family name was Chowkidaar, meaning “the keeper” of the temple or of the holy fire. When new agiaries were set up in villages inhabited by Parsis in Gujarat, Maneckshaw’s father carried the holy flame to them. “In those uncertain times he travelled on a bullock cart, armed with a sword to ward off attacks by wild animals or dacoits.” When Maneckshaw started
Homai and Maneckshaw’s marriage certificate.
to work in the city of Bombay, he discovered that his surname had other connotations and changed it to Vyarawalla. Homai considers thirteen to be her lucky number. She was born in 1913 and she met Maneckshaw at the age of thirteen, among many other coincidences. They were inseparable friends and companions. People had become so used to seeing them together, that in his absence they would enquire, “Woh kahan hai?”—”Where is he?” This was despite the fact that Maneckshaw’s mother, Shirinmai, was opposed to their marriage. “In those days orthodox people didn’t want collegeeducated girls for their sons—especially those who had studied with boys. My mother-in-law wanted him to get married to another girl of her choice and she only relented when her own daughter Najamai died suddenly of snakebite and I went to stay with her for a while.” After fifteen years of courtship, Homai and Maneckshaw got married on the 19th of January 1941. Only five people attended their
wedding, which was performed by Maneckshaw’s cousin, Dinshawji Katrak, in the Slater Road flat in Bombay. The guests included their mothers, Homai’s brothers and her cousin, Homai Mulla. The couple sat on the same chairs—“bought for just rupees twentyfive each”—that now adorn Homai’s living room. The entire cost of the wedding came to about two hundred rupees. “The most expensive items which cost a hundred and fifteen rupees were my wedding sari and blouse. The sari was light silver-grey in crinkled georgette with a gold border. I wore a silk blouse with it that was stitched for the first time by a tailor. Yes, and there were two garlands of course, which was part of the ceremony. We didn’t want my mother to be burdened with expenditure, but the real reason was that neither of us liked the elaborate tamasha that accompanies Indian weddings. ‘Small, simple and sober,’ was our motto.” In the evening Homai and Maneckshaw went out to Chowpatti Beach and ate some bhelpuri. “That was our wedding reception!”
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3 4 5 6 7 8
Urdu-Parsi Theatre was also in a sense a forerunner of popular Hindi cinema. See the work of Somnath Gupt (1981) translated into English recently by Kathryn Hansen. Kathryn Hansen, tr. and ed., The Parsi Theatre: Its Origins and Development: Somnath Gupt (Kolkata: Seagull, 2005). See also Kathryn Hansen, “Making Women Visible: Gender and Race CrossDressing in the Parsi Theatre,” in Theatre Journal 51 (1999), and Hansen’s other body of work on female impersonation in Parsi theatre in India. See Saryu Doshi, “Of Costumes and Sets”; Pheroza J. Godrej and Firoza Punthakey Mistree, eds., A Zoroastrian Tapestry: Art, Religion and Culture (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2002). White muslin headscarf worn by traditional Parsi women. The sacred white muslin vest worn by Zoroastrians. Sacred thread worn by Zoroastrians. I am grateful to the Sparrow Archives, Bombay, for drawing my attention to this story. A traditional practice of segregation within the Parsi community during the days of the menstrual period. There are several hilarious stories about how Parsi women would get the better of these practices. For instance, Homai related a popular story about the women of Songhad, a village near Navsari, who would mysteriously get their period when guests arrived. The guests would end up cooking for them as a result!
The Parsi presence in Bombay. At the Hormarjee Bomanjee Wadia Atash Behram (Fire Temple), set up in 1830 at Dhobi Talao, near Marine Drive.
“BOMBAY,
THE
BEAUTIFUL”
“While in school, I used to read about the movement for Independence and about Panditji [Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru] and the other leaders visiting Bombay for meetings at the Azad Maidan. It all sounded so exciting, but Parsi schools didn’t want their students to be involved with politics. I wished that I would be able to see all those great leaders one day.” Homai Vyarawalla
O
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ne of Homai and Maneckshaw’s favourite weekend escapes in the mid-thirties was Navsari, where they photographed the cultivation and tapping of toddy. Those were the days of the undivided Bombay Presidency and the state of Gujarat was yet to be carved out. A getaway to Navsari was also pleasurable because of the joys of drinking toddy: “It would bring out all the perspiration and toxins from our body. We would feel so nice and light in the evening.” Toddy was either drunk raw from the khajoor trees, or boiled with garlic and jaggery, like tea in the evenings. “It was very healthy and full of vitamins,” according to Homai. This was soon to stop. The problem was that fermented toddy was, after all, an intoxicant. The Prohibition movement initiated by Gandhi was gathering momentum, and the same images of toddy cultivation taken by Homai and Maneckshaw were now published in the Orient Illustrated Weekly to illustrate this campaign. As Homai recalls, it was her community that was adversely affected by Prohibition. The rich Parsis of Navsari, Surat and Valsad had their breweries and toddy shops locked. “Worse, after Gandhi’s strictures against drinking, no worker would venture into their fields to harvest the crop and many families became impoverished overnight.” This seemingly isolated development draws attention to the rather complicated relationship that the Parsi community had with pre-Independence India. Ironically, it was Dadabhai Naoroji, the Parsi President of the Indian National Congress, who had first demanded Swaraj or complete Independence for India.1 Bhikaiji Cama’s fiery speech in favour of Independence at the Second International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907 was also well known. Other famous Parsis, like Sir Dinshaw Vatcha and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, had been prominently
A spread on Prohibition in the Orient Illustrated Weekly dated August 7th, 1938. “Gandhiji’s insistence on the question of Prohibition was like holding to ransom the whole country for the misdeeds of a few addicted to drinking. It created a new breed of bootleggers and mafia gangs brewing illicit liquor in unhealthy surroundings. If at all, banning of manufacturing and drinking of liquor would have served the purpose, but why ban toddy that was a healthy natural beverage? When toddy was banned, people turned to drinking the harmful bootleggers’ concoction.”
themselves in a bind over how to react to the nationalist movement. There was a certain distaste for street politics. Growing up in a middle class Parsi home in Bombay, Homai had never worn a cotton sari because of its associations with the nationalist movement. “In those days it was specially mentioned in our Parsi schools that children should not take part in politics. They wouldn’t allow us to wear cotton.” The popular perception about the Parsis—“friendly to the Indians, loyal to the British”—was obviously inaccurate, but the rumour soon spread that the Parsis didn’t want the British to leave India.
This photograph of people enjoying toddy in Navsari was taken by Maneckshaw in 1937. We know that because Homai is in the picture drinking toddy!
associated with not just the freedom struggle, but also with the history of local selfgovernment and reform in Bombay. Landing in Diu as refugees in the tenth century, the community was determined to mingle easily with the Indians. As the popular story went, they had promised the Hindu ruler of Sanjan, Jadhav Rana, that they would be like sugar, which dissolved in milk and yet sweetened it permanently.2 There was also another history of the community and this was the story of Parsi entrepreneurship in Bombay.3 The city had become the commercial capital of India because of Parsis like Sir Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy, Sir Dinshaw Manekji Petit, Sir Cowasji
Jehangir and Jamsetji Tata. These men and their families did not just represent big business and industry, but were deeply enmeshed in culture and philanthropy in Bombay. Hospitals, schools, colleges, roads, colonies and charities still bear their names. Many in the community identified with this part of their history, a history of sethias and traders who had strong links with the colonizers of India.4 In those days all persons born in Bombay became natural subjects of England. “They called the Parsis the royal community in Bombay.” 5 With this widely divergent sense of identification, some in the Parsi community approached Indian politics with ambivalence. Despite their admiration for Dadabhai Naoroji, average Parsis found
Homai recalls that the community was also affected very adversely by the, “Khede ooski zamin”—Land To The Tiller Movement—that originated during the nationalist struggle. Most Parsis in Gujarat were agriculturists with large landholdings that they had carved from wastelands. These had been turned into fertile fields that were now taken away and distributed among the labourers who worked for them. “There was no compensation for the owners of the land who lost their means of livelihood and were turned into paupers overnight. My husband’s maternal grandmother, who owned large fields in the villages surrounding Vyara, with teak and sandalwood trees, was reduced to abject poverty. After the death of her husband she supported her daughter’s family and, with her fields gone, she died with no money, leaving the family financially stranded.” The campaign for Prohibition led by Gandhi added to the toll on the community as women were already picketing against liquor licenses in Bombay.6 The Parsis were to survive these misfortunes and in the early thirties, Bombay still very much belonged to them.
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“I was bold about what I wanted to do. Those were days when women were not supposed to carry handbags. They were not supposed to have any pockets either because of the sari and carried their cash in their blouses. Instead I used to go about with a camera. I still remember, someone asked me, ‘Kya hajamat karne ja rahi hai?’—‘Are you going to work as a barber?’ I replied, ‘Haan...kya aapki karwani hai?’—‘Yes...would you like me to cut your hair?’“
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A Parsi photographer, Shahpur N. Bhedwar, had made a name for himself, winning awards in Bombay and London as a photographer in the late nineteenth century. Bhedwar’s work represented an older theatrical tradition of salon photography that Homai disparagingly called “armchair photography”. There were others like him in Bombay at the turn of the twentieth century. She recalls famous studio owners like Taraporewalla and Ambalal Patel, who would shoot portraits of couples in the studio with huge cameras and complicated paraphernalia. This kind of photography did not appeal to her. But Homai needn’t have worried because new technological developments in the early twentieth century were fast freeing the camera from the confines of the studio. The turn of the century also marked a more democratic engagement of Indians with photography.7 Bombay was a good place to start a career for these aspiring photographers, as magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India and The Bombay Chronicle were offering them possibilities of work. According to Homai, Maneckshaw was one of the first to provide these publications with photo-features on Bombay.8 She began her career in photography by assisting him. Given the difficulty of a woman being accepted as a professional photographer in those days, Homai’s own images and accompanying text
The Parsi presence in Bombay. At the fire temple and at Chowpatti Beach on the occasion of Avan Yazad Parab, Festival of the Waters.
were first printed under Maneckshaw’s name and credited with his initials, “M.J.V.” In the thirties, Bombay was the most dynamic and modern of Indian cities. 9 Homai’s early images in the thirties and forties are a visual record of urban life in Bombay and its suburbs. She recalls the city as having tramcars that were first horse driven and then operated by electricity. “Later replaced with buses, the tracks were removed completely. The streets were swept and washed every
“Bombay was a village before the Parsis took over.” By the time Homai was growing up in Bombay, the Parsis were everywhere. They set up most institutions and charities in the city. Headed initially by the British, the J.J. School of Arts where Homai studied was set up by Sir Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy. Her college education was subsidized by a scholarship from one of the numerous Parsi charities in Bombay. Her brothers worked in the Petit cotton mills. She would often visit the Gateway of India flanked by the Taj Hotel. Popular folklore recalled the story about how Jamsetji Tata wasn’t allowed to stay in an elite hotel because of the colour of his skin. The Taj, opposite the Gateway of India, would be his answer to this humiliation. Strong votaries of economic nationalism, the Parsis had set up banks and the newspaper industry in Bombay. Homai’s early pictures were published in The Bombay Chronicle, the Jam-e-Jamshed and The Current—all founded by Parsis.
day: “ ‘Bombay the beautiful’, it came to be called.” While the Parsis may have dominated its affairs in the decade before Independence, the city was a cosmopolitan mix of different communities that even played cricket against each other.10 “In fact, the Parsis were the first
to play cricket as well.” Homai recalls watching Pentagular matches that were fought on lines of communities between the Parsis, Hindus, Muslims, the Europeans and the “rest”, which included Jains, Buddhists and Christians. This sectarianism in sport was encouraged by
the British who had, in the past, followed elaborate systems of ethnographic classification based on caste and religious identity to understand this “strange” country.11 On assignment for magazines like The Illustrated Weekly of India, which were
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Two sequential issues of The Bombay Chronicle in September 1941. Both portraits were taken by Homai of her friends, Rehana Mogul and Gul Eskie, at the J.J. School of Arts. They are credited to Maneckshaw Vyarawalla (M.J.V.).
Opposite page: Above left and right: Homai at Chowpatti Beach, photographed while taking pictures of the Ganpati immersion there. She holds her Contax camera. The building seen in the background is Wilson College, the centre for Homai’s Matriculation examination. Below: Left: Taziya procession on the occasion of Muharrum in Bombay. Centre: The Ganpati procession in Bombay. Homai climbed onto the second floor of the building opposite that was under construction to take this picture. Accompanied by her brother Homi, they found the door to the staircase locked after she finished taking pictures. They had to finally climb down the scaffolding with Homi vowing never to come photographing with her again! Right: Parsi women coming out of the fire temple in Dhobi Talao, Bombay.
These are some of the very first pictures taken by Homai and published under Maneckshaw’s name in The Bombay Chronicle in 1939–40. In 1937 Homai borrowed Maneckshaw’s Rolleiflex to take pictures of the J.J. School of Arts’ women’s picnic to the Ambernath Temple near Bombay. She also photographed other activities of the school. When Homai requested its British Director, Mr. Gerrard, for captions, she was asked why his wife had not found place in the photographs. She finally had to do the captions on her own, looking through books at the Petit Library. The woman sketching is Homai’s friend Mani Turner. Homai’s camera was soon in great demand with all her other friends. Homai herself earned a princely sum of eight rupees for her first spread of eight pictures.
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Marwaris in Bhuleshwar, with new account books to be ceremoniously started on Dhanteras, the day before Diwali; when Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity is honoured. “They were so superstitious. The Marwaris would come dressed in sherwanis holding red silken cloth decorated with zari and tilak to take back the books. And then they would come out and wait on the streets for an auspicious omen before proceeding. It was so funny to see five people suddenly breaking into a run when they saw a jharoowali or a flowerseller go by!”
British owned, Homai’s early photographs of Bombay seemed to echo this tradition. Armed with their cameras, Maneckshaw and Homai photographed streets, festivals and the work and activities of its diverse inhabitants. In 1939 the Second World War broke out, placing Britain and its most significant colony in a dilemma. In favour of supporting the war against fascism, the Congress wanted
The “economy of begging”: According to Homai, each of the steps at the Mahalaxmi Temple in Bombay, that the beggars occupied had a price. Beggars would be given pice that they would collect and exchange with the local thekewala for annas and rupees. “Of course the agent would charge his own commission for exchanging the money.” Picture taken in 1940.
a commitment from Britain about Independence. In turn, the colonial state needed the support of Indian troops and civilian population, despite their gathering hostility to imperialism.12 In this tense atmosphere, documentary footage and photography became a useful tool for the British to mobilize popular opinion. The newly constituted F.A.B., Film Advisory Board, commissioned a series of “information” films that highlighted war efforts as well as the
activities of the British state as a progressive and developmentalist institution.13 These themes of scientific and social transformation also found expression in Homai’s photofeatures of the time. Some of her early spreads featured the Haffkine Institute, where vaccines were prepared, and the Victoria Memorial Blind School in Tardeo, Bombay. As part of a series titled “India’s Rural Industries”, she shot fisherwomen, agricultural labour, cotton ginning, toddy tapping and brick making.
One of the activities of the Haffkine Institute in Bombay. “Once, animal lovers were agitating against the cruelties practiced by the Haffkine Institute on animals. Mahatma Gandhi visited the Institute and was greatly impressed by the way the institution looked after the well being of the animals, rodents, snakes, etc., kept in well-swept cages for experimental purposes. But he never asked to see how the experiments were carried on in various departments. He never saw how a lamb’s skull was drilled and the brain injected with a deadly disease to learn the progress of the disease on the lamb; and after it died, how its brain was brought out to use it as an anti-rabies vaccine. Nor did he see a mouse imprisoned in a glass jar with a handful of fleas to induce the symptoms of plague in the little creature that would endure the torture for days before it died of sheer exhaustion trying to escape. Nor a horse’s throat being slit open to collect its blood and the wound stitched up again; the whole process repeated several times till the horse died after the last drop of its blood was collected. I was a witness to all these and many more of these heart breaking cruelties the general public never got to see.”
The Blind School at Tardeo. This assignment got Homai and Maneckshaw their jobs with the British Information Services at Delhi in 1942.
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The text in the Indian Firemen spread (below) asks, “If ever enemy planes succeed in flying over this country, are India’s fire brigades ready for this emergency?” A Parsi, Rustomji Palamkote, was the dynamic Fire Chief of the Fort area Fire Brigade Station in Bombay (above). He was among the seventytwo firemen who lost their lives in the harbour blasts aboard two ships in 1942. Most of them died trying to save lives of crewmembers and drowned during the rescue operations. His brother Edul P. Palamkote, also in the same picture, became the first Fire Chief of Independent India. “Most of the people I photographed in these pictures died in the accident. The blasts were so intense that gold bricks stacked on the ship were blown into the homes of some Parsis, but they were so honest that they returned the gold. The entire fire brigade from Bombay reached the ship and the second blast occurred while they were saving people. Rustomji was thrown into the sea. An excellent swimmer, his legs caught in the debris and he drowned.”
“The Government of India had assigned Mr. Bhavnani from the Films Division to take movie footage of war efforts in Bombay. He didn’t take me seriously as I followed him around for a spread on the fire service. I captured this explosion with my small Rolleiflex camera before he could catch it on film. It so happened that my pictures were published in The Illustrated Weekly a week before his movie was shown. The man was furious. ‘She has killed my film,’ he shouted!”
Most of Homai’s photo-stories on the War effort were first printed in The Illustrated Weekly of India. In contrast to The Bombay Chronicle that had been founded by Pherozeshah Mehta in 1915, with the idea of supporting early Indian nationalism, The Weekly was edited by an Englishman, Stanley Jepson, and often reflected British interests in India.14 During the days of the War it featured fervent appeals to the civilian population of Bombay to participate in war-related utility services like first aid, hospitals, and other rescue activities. Article after article asked Bombay’s citizens if they were prepared for the war against the “forces of evil threatening the world”.15 This was a bit ironic, as the Second World War and the gathering nationalist movement had complicated notions of belonging and loyalty among several urban groups who were being asked to join the War effort. The key question was— whom did the Indians identify with in this battle between democracy and fascism? If they did identify with the Allies, then how could they position themselves against British colonialism? Juxtapositions of civil life in Bombay and the impending war, in Homai’s photographs point to some of these conflicts. For instance, a spread on the war effort (see page 36) titled, “There is a job for every patriot: You can do something,” notes, “Do you see any class, colour, racial caste or religious distinction here? These are women of your native land helping all the injured in the National emergency. You are a woman of India too. They need your help in the mercy work. Must they ask in vain?” Calling Indian citizens “patriots” and asking them to support a “national emergency” is somewhat ironic as this spread is dated 1942, which was also the year that Gandhi called for the “Quit India” A hand-coloured cover of The Illustrated Weekly, taken at a cotton-ginning factory in Navsari.
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movement. Mass demonstrations were immobilizing law and order everywhere. The emphasis on the need for “free movement of people and traffic” or referring to emergency activities as “mercy work” that had “nothing to do with politics” seem to acquire a different perspective when seen against this backdrop. Another spread on wartime rations (see page 36) juxtaposes the title “Chappattis for the Indian Troops & Bread for the British Army,” with the following text: “Wherever they are, Indian troops are given their own food and this is made by their own caste men. Brahmins for example get food cooked by Brahmin cooks and Dogra cooks make food for Dogra troops. Though this causes a great number of problems, the idea is always put in operation in the field.” These notions of a hierarchical Indian army and a non-stratified and fair colonial administration were obviously simplistic. Among the many popular but relatively unrecognized revolts in the events leading to the Independence was a mutiny by the Royal Indian Navy in February 1946 in Bombay. The revolt seemed to have been sparked off by reports of contaminated food and racial insults by Commander King, the Officer In Charge of a shore base. His racist address to the ratings had triggered a hunger strike in the Signals Training establishment, Talwar, which spread to naval bases all over the country.16 Despite some of these contradictions, Homai still remains appreciative of the efforts made by the colonial administration to warn civilians of the dangers of bombing, even when they were not assured of political cooperation, as she feels that they were being provided with life saving essential skills. “Serious” issues of war juxtaposed against the pre-occupations of civilian life.
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The War effort in Bombay.
Prominent amongst her early spreads are images of Parsi women being trained for rescue activities during the war. Women appear as homemakers as well as participants in public life in Homai’s early images, presenting more complicated insights into gender relations and acceptable roles for them at the time. In opposition to working class women, who worked alongside men, career options for most middle and upper class women still seemed largely circumscribed by normative gender roles. An article titled “Careers for Indian Women” in The Illustrated Weekly of India dated May 11th, 1941, describes the focus of women’s education to be “the companion and inspiring helpmate of her husband” and most professions were placed as pastimes that would aid their role as homemakers. The discipline of Home Science (some of these images were taken later at the Lady Irwin College in Delhi in 1946), was also grooming women to be more efficient homemakers. It presented them with possibilities that would not take them too far away from the home, such as dairy farming, poultry rearing, bee keeping, horticulture and dressmaking. Some of Homai’s images of women in Bombay seem also to suggest that there were new options opening up for them like architecture, window dressing and advertising. Predictably these were published in the “Home Section” of the magazines. In the early forties, Bachoo Bulsara, a young woman in her teens, working as a Secretary with Associated Cement joined the A.R.P. (Air Raid Precaution) training in Cusrow Baug in Bombay. This event changed her life as she met her husband Tehemton Parakh here. Bachoo recalls an almost equally young woman photographing her at the training. The photographs were published in several publications including this one, a War propaganda publication of the British Information Services. In January 2004, Bachoo, now settled in Kolkata, suddenly recognized herself while standing before this photograph at the UNESCO-Parzor Exhibition.
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Picture spreads from The Illustrated Weekly dated 1941. Most of the women in these pictures were Homai’s classmates at the J.J. School of Arts.
Fisherwomen—it was common for Maneckshaw and Homai to photograph an entire process and make stories out of these pictures. “We would write up the entire story and provide it to the magazine for them to edit.”
Picture pages featuring Lady Irwin College, Delhi from an article in The Illustrated Weekly (1946) titled “The Passing of a Drudge.”
“My pictures of Lady Irwin College were first published in the Weekly (1945). This Ceylonese woman saw the pictures and was motivated to come to India to study at the college. She later modelled for me for this picture.”
In a black and white era, the covers of magazines like The Illustrated Weekly, which often featured women, were hand-tinted by their own artists. Most of the models in these colour pictures were students at the Lady Irwin College in Delhi. This cover is dated August 18th, 1946.
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Different faces of women in Bombay— a spread from The Bombay Chronicle dated 1941. “The woman with her feet in water was going through a divorce. When the picture was published, she exclaimed to me, ‘Oh my God! Everybody is going to think that I am keeping cool despite my divorce!’ “
Homai’s classmate at the J.J. School of Arts and her favourite model, Rehana Mogul, posing for the camera.
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Rehana Mogul and Mani Turner at work in their sculpture class at the J.J. School of Arts. They were good friends. A live male model can be seen in the background.
Some of these pictures are from A.R.P. and fire-fighting sessions organized at Cusrow Baug, Colaba and Dadar. Parsi women also trained with the St. John’s Ambulance Services, as well as at local hospitals, learning how to deal with casualties during the War. Also see opposite page.
Simultaneously, the demands of the Second World War were urging some women out of the home, as they participated in mock demonstrations of utility activities that were far from conventional. This move into the public domain was probably in keeping with the peculiar conditions of a war that had created new spaces in which women were needed. It is not surprising that most of Homai’s images featured British and Parsi women. As in many post-War situations, perhaps these unusual activities would have been suspended when the condition of the emergency was over. The end of the War also marked the beginnings of Indian Independence. Encouraged and inspired by Gandhi, Indian women had started to play a major role in mass demonstrations. Some historians have seen this phase of nationalism as a setback for the women’s movement. They view the struggle for Independence as absorbing the women’s question and putting it on hold for the next two decades.17 However, the fact that women had entered the public sphere was significant. Also, generalizations about movements often ignore the smaller stories and the “exceptions”. One of these exceptions was Homai herself. In a post-War era, Homai was to move out of Bombay forever and be catapulted into the most public and political of arenas, that of Delhi in the years leading unto 1947. Homai may not have photographed any of the mass movements inspired by Gandhi in Bombay, but destiny had other things in store for her. Not only was this Westernized Parsi woman, who worked for the British, to switch to khadi saris, but she was to become one of the most significant chroniclers of Independence through her images.
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Opposite page: The Victory Parade by the Allied Forces in India passes through Connaught Place in Delhi marking the end of the Second World War in 1945. Homai photographed the parade from the balcony of her apartment.
1 2
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1906. A different version of this story is recounted by Sooni Taraporewalla in the Introduction to her book, The Zoroastrians of India: The Parsis: A Photographic Journey: 1980–2000 (Bombay: Good Books, 2000), p. 15. Parsi folklore also holds that a gold ring was put into the milk to prevent it from boiling over. This meant that they would never merge but would live peacefully with the Indians. Starting out as village farmers and artisans in Gujarat, the community laid both the foundations of the industrial revolution and urbanization in western India. They were pioneers in the opium trade and the cotton industry in India. The lifeline of Bombay; its dockyards and ships, were built in the eighteenth century by a Parsi, Lowji Nusserwanji Wadia. Numbering just a little over forty-six thousand in 1901 in Bombay, Parsi traders, moneylenders and bankers laid the foundations of urban life in the city while also initiating political and social reform movements in the community. From Rusheed R. Wadia, “Colonial Trade and Parsi Entrepreneurs,” in Godrej and Mistree, eds., p. 454. The Parsis had moved to Bombay in the seventeenth century and began their careers as brokers between the Portuguese and the Indians. The East India Company was also benevolent towards the community who in turn became their political and commercial mediators in India. Interview with Homai Vyarawalla. See Radha Kumar, A History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1990 (New Delhi: Kali for Women), 1993, p. 77. It must be clarified here that there were also a large number of Parsi women from well-known families who played an active role in the Nationalist movement and who came out in the streets of Bombay in support of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha and the Swadeshi movement. These included names like Perin D.S. Captain, the granddaughter of Dadabhai Naoroji who founded the Rashtriya Stree Sabha, Khurshed Naoroji who was asked by Gandhi to work with Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan, Mithoo Petit, Serene P. Jeejeebhoy, Dinbai F.S.
Patuck and Mary Clubwalla Jadhav among others. Hirabai A. Tata was a pioneer in the battle for the vote for Indian women and was the Honorary Secretary of the Indian Women’s Association, which later became the All IndiaWomen’s Conference. Mithan Jamshed Lam helped draft the Hindu Code Bill. See Piloo Nanavutty, The Parsis (New Delhi: National Book Trust of India, 1977). I am grateful to Tanika Sarkar and to Shernaz Cama for drawing my attention to these sources. 7 See G. Thomas, History of Photography India 1840–1980 (Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh State Akademi of Photography, 1981). Shambhu Shaha (1905–1988), was among these early Indian photographers who documented the streets of Calcutta from the early thirties. 8 Homai recalls another photographer who did the same: M. Desai who also taught photography at the J.J. School of Arts after Homia left the school in 1942. 9 Gyan Prakash, “Blitz’s Bombay,” in Seminar, No. 528 (August 2003). 10 See Ramachandra Guha’s work on cricket in preIndependence India. Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport (London: Picador, 2002), p. 16, 305. Till 1947, most Indian cricket was played on the lines of communities. According to Guha the existence of community based cricket was a bizarre paradox: “a nakedly communal tournament that grew in and was nurtured by the most progressive and cosmopolitan city in modern India.” There is no doubt that the British encouraged this sectarianism; “Communal cricket was molded as much by Hindu caste prejudice as by Parsi snobbery, by Muslim cultural insularity and by British racial superiority.” I am grateful to Shikha Jhingan for drawing my attention to Guha’s work. 11 Christopher Pinney points out how the census and early colonial photography were used to categorize and classify the new colony. Ordinary people were represented as photographic “types” in ethnographic projects such as the eight volumes of The People of India, edited by Watson and Kaye, 1868–1875, commissioned by Lord Canning; and The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay,
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2 vols. (London: 1863–66). See Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). It was only after the Nazi attack on Russia and the success of the Japanese in South East Asia in 1941 that the British felt obliged to make some gestures to win over Indian public opinion. The Cripps mission was a result of this. See Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885–1947 (New Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd., 1983), p. 385. See Srirupa Roy, “Moving Pictures: The Postcolonial State and Visual Representations of India,” in Beyond Appearances? Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern India, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy (New Delhi: Sage, 2003), p. 240. See B.K. Karanjia, “Parsi Pioneers of the Press (1822–1915),” in Godrej and Mistree. A phrase used to describe the Axis powers led by Germany in one of the magazine spreads. From Tariq Ali, The Nehrus and the Gandhis: An Indian Dynasty (Great Britain: Picador, 1985), p. 71. According to Ali he referred to them as, “You sons of bitches, sons of coolies, sons of bloody junglees (savages).” What was interesting about the mutiny was that like the I.N.A., there was total solidarity and absence of sectarian differences among the men. They had elected a Naval Central Strike Committee headed by M.S. Khan and had political slogans demanding the release of I.N.A. detainees, equal pay for white and Indian sailors and the withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia. The strike had tremendous public support with crowds bringing food for the ratings to the Gateway of India. Extremely worried about the consequences of the Mutiny, the British pleaded with the Muslim League and the Congress to quell the uprising. Jinnah made a communal speech urging the Muslim sailors to withdraw. However, it was Gandhi and Patel amongst others who finally persuaded them to surrender, much to the disappointment of C.P.I. leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali. See Sarkar, pp. 423–425 and Ali, p. 71. See Kumar, pp. 93, 94.
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PHOTOGRPAHY
Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyrawalla INDIA IN FOCUS
Sabeena Gadihoke
232 pages, 504 photographs 11.5 x 11.5” (292 x 292 mm), hc ISBN: 978-81-88204-66-3 9 x 9” (229 x 229 mm), sc with gate fold ISBN: 978-81-89995-46-1 ₹1500 | $35 | £25 Fall 2022 | World rights
Usha Titikshu
Sabeena Gadihoke teaches Video and Television Production at the Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia University in New Delhi. She is also an independent documentary filmmaker and cameraperson. Gadihoke graduated in History from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University and did a Masters in Mass Communication at Jamia University. Her film Three Women and a Camera was awarded prizes at Film South Asia at Kathmandu (1999) and at the Mumbai International Film Festival (2000). She was a Fulbright Fellow during 1995–96 and has received grants from India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore and the Charles Wallace Trust, U.K. for her research on photography.
For books on Indian art, culture and literature, visit: Mapin Publishing www.mapinpub.com
“A chornicle of contemporary history seen through pictures taken by a photojournalist who's mostly as unobtrusive as a fly on the wall.” Shyam Benegal, Outlook
“Her photographs are integral parts as much of India’s photojournalism heritage as of the nation’s collective psyche.” Saibal Chatterjee, The Tribune
“Gadihoke's work brings together excellent reproductions of Homai's photographs, thorough curating, nuanced and readable biographical documentation, and a well-researched grasp of Homai's social and historical context, especially the history of the Parsi community that is embodied in her life and career.” The Telegraph
