I want to be Homai Vyarawalla

She started her career in 1930s and thereafter received noticed at the national level when she moved to Mumbai in 1942 with her family, before moving to Delhi where in the next thirty years she shot many political and national leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family working as a press photographer. At the onset of the World War II, she started working on assignments of the Bombay based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which over the years till 1970, published many of her black and white images, which later became iconic. (wikipedia)

I want to be Homai Vyarawalla - I want to have seen the last 80 years standing at the threshold of monumental events. Always seeing the world through the eyes of a metal and glass apparatus, recording and preserving history as if it belonged to just her. I want to have seen the lament on the face of Mountbatten, the sorrow in the eyes of Nehru and the passage of time. Of having recorded the same streets every year and knowing how her country changed.

Its like being a rock - a lighthouse - at the mouth of a busy harbour - watching ships go by.

Its an amazing life. Wonder if someone would be interested in making a movie out of her story. Keep those pictures in a chronological order and fade into them and recreate those events on celluloid. Go deeper into her thoughts at that time. It would make wonderful viewing.


I wish i could be her.