As we all know that Google always celebrates the birth and death anniversary of people, places and things (inventions) by dedicating an artistic doodle for them. This time to Google India has celebrated the birth anniversary of Homai Vyarawalla. Read further to know everything you should know about her!
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Who was Homai Vyarawalla?
For many of us, this is the ear of photography and most you don’t know about Late Homai Vyarawalla! The first female photojournalist of India. She was born on 9 December 1913, exactly 104 years back to a Parsi family in Navsari, Gujarat. Her father was a theatre artist and her childhood moving from place to place with her father’s traveling theatre company. She was an alumnus of Mumbai University (then Bombay University) and Sir J. J School of Arts.
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She started learning photography by husband Manekcshaw Vyarawala, who was a photographer at the Times of India. Homai Vyarawalla began photographing day-to-day life in the city, eventually earning an art school degree and becoming a professional photographer. In 1942, Vyarawalla secured a position at the British Information Services in New Delhi. There, she snapshotted the meeting where Congress members voted for the partition of India.
Why Google Doodle for Homai Vyarawalla?
Homai Vyarawalla was one of the first and foremost female photojournalists of her time. Her photographs were published under the pseudo name “Dalda 13” because of a very valid reason. But it was her electric images of India’s independence movement and candid shots of such people as the Dalai Lama, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. that earned Vyarawalla lasting recognition.
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In 2010, Vyarawalla earned the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honor. Today’s Doodle honors India’s “First Lady of the Lens” on what would have been her 104th birthday with a tapestry of Indian life and history drawn by guest Doodler and Mumbai artist Sameer Kulavoor. Vyarawalla is at the center.
Why Homai Vyarawalla gave up photography and how she died?
A year after her husband’s death in 1973, Homai Vyarawalla quit photography and lived alone in Vadodara, Gujarat. In the year 1989, she lost her son and only child Farouq, who taught at BITS Pilani.
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In January 2012, Vyarawalla fell from her bed and fractured a hip bone. Her neighbors had helped her reach a hospital where she developed breathing complications. She had been suffering from an interstitial lung disease which resulted in her death at 10.30 am on 15 January 2012.
