Freeze Frame

Vyarawalla’s photographs run into the thousands, spanning three decades including the last days of the British Empire in India. Among the 500 printed in the book is one of the swearing-in of Lord Mountbatten as Governor-General of India. A comfortable family picture of Homai, husband Maneckshaw and son Farouq looks cheerful on another page. Somewhere in between is the Dalai Lama’s first visit to India in 1956, the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966, plenty of fashion shows at the British High Commission and a chain of presidential and prime ministerial visits to India.

As you go from page to page, the captions can be given a miss. Vyarawalla does that bit for you. And she narrates in arduous detail, every bit of the moments captured on lens. ‘‘That’s because I remember everything,’’ she says, ‘‘there’s nothing you cannot do if you wish and decide to. Besides, these were all important moments, I couldn’t forget any.’’

Her Vadodhara home is dotted with dust-free, immaculately maintained framed photographs, an aged wooden tripod and an easel holding an old family portrait. Vyarawalla lost her husband when she was 36 and her son passed away 17 years ago. ‘‘I drive my car (a 50-year-old Fiat), cook my own food, do plumbing and repair works when required. That’s how I have always done it. I prefer being close to nature,’’ she says. Her diet is the same every day: Rice-curry-dal-pickle for lunch and roti-sabzi-dal for dinner. She also throws in some trivia: ‘‘In the summer heat of Delhi, in the ’40s and ’50s, I wouldn’t even use a fan until I perspired real bad.’’ Her frame is light, but the gleam in her eyes is a permanent fixture. The thinning hair still has a substantial number of black strands.

Vyarawalla decided to call it quits as a photographer when she was 57. For 23 years, her photographs and negatives remained locked away. They were lost in transit once, only for the world to find Homai Vyarawalla again, years later. ‘‘Forget a book, I didn’t even think my photographs were important. After 50 years I began realising the value of my work and thought they must be worth saving if they’re generating such interest and talk,’’ she says.

Vyarawalla journeyed through photography with about six cameras. From getting Re 1 for a photograph and working for The Bombay Chronicle for two annas a picture in the early ’40s, to working with Maneckshaw as a husband-wife team for the office of the UK High Commissioner, Vyarawalla smiles at instances she picks from different decades. But the memory of her husband continues to be her fondest—‘‘After all, it was by snatching my then-boyfriend’s camera as a teenager that I began with photography. Although we came from a poor background, the camera films were affordable.’’ Maneckshaw was obsessed with photography too. After their marriage, he would ask her to read books on photography instead of novels. ‘‘At their hometown Vyara, he would get under the bed, cover it with a blanket from all four sides and make that a dark room to print photographs,’’ Vyarawalla recalls.

She has not picked up a new camera ever since she left photography. ‘‘Cameras now are far too advanced for me,’’ she says. Her old Rolleiflex and Mamiyaflex twin lens cameras have been preserved inside her living room. She adjusts the old well-kept lens as we capture the moment on our camera. ‘‘My face looks like a cauliflower now,’’ she says, and breaks into a melodious, infectious laugh.