Some of the subjects for her photographs were Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family. The photographs that she shot were published under the pseudonym “Dalda 13”. The logic behind this name was that her birth year was 1913, she met her husband at the age of 13 and her first car’s number was DLD 13. Homai Vyarawalla quit photography a year after her husband’s death and moved to Vadodara in 1973. She had moved with her son Farouq to Pilani, Rajasthan where he taught at BITS Pilani. She moved back to Vadodara with her son in 1982. She lived alone in a Vadodara, Gujarat after her son passed away in 1989 due to cancer. Google Doodle Celebrates 156th Birth Anniversary Of Fridtjof Nansen, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient And Norwegian Explorer
Early life and education
Vyarawalla started her career in the 1930s. At the onset of the World War II, she started working on assignments for the Bombay-based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which published many of her black and white images that later became iconic. In the early years of her career, since Vyarawalla was unknown and a woman, her photographs were published under her husband's name. Eventually her photography received notice at the national level, particularly after moving to Delhi in 1942 to join the British Information Services, where she photographed many political and national leaders in the period leading upto independence, including Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family while working as a press photographer. Her favourite subject was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. Most of her photographs were published under the pseudonym "Dalda 13″. The reasons behind her choice of this name were that her birth year was 1913, she met her husband at the age of 13 and her first car's number plate read "DLD 13″. In 1970, shortly after her husband's death, Homai Vyarawalla decided to give up photography lamenting over the "bad behaviour" of the new generation of photographers. She did not take a single photograph in the last 40-plus years of her life. When asked why she quit photography while at the peak of her profession, she said
"It was not worth it any more. We had rules for photographers; we even followed a dress code. We treated each other with respect, like colleagues. But then, things changed for the worst. They the new generation of photographers] were only interested in making a few quick bucks; I didn't want to be part of the crowd anymore.
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