'DALDA 13" she was NOT !

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/world/asia/homai-vyarawalla-india-photojournalist-dies-at-98.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

The New York Times- ‘the newspaper of record’ records/repeats the Wikipedia mistake. “ DALDA 13”  was NOT , I repeat N O T  the name Homai Vyarawalla  was known by.

“Mummy” is what her colleagues called her and that was the name I used when I wrote my first recovery/discovery article about her. In 1992 - in ‘The Economic Times’, New Delhi. (Scroll down the blog and u can see an e-copy the text.)

I can understand how the NYT made the mistake. Google will throw up the material that is there on the worldwide web and the Wikipedia page will pop up, at the top. What happened before the web took over the world will seem (and now be deemed) to have just not happened.  And the circle of misinformation will repeat itself.  Very interestingly though, a link in the article does clear the mystery of  “Dalda 13”.  That was the name of Vyarawalla’s black Italian Fiat. The locals called it that because of its license plate- DLD 13. And a documentary made on Vyarawalla by Monica Baker from London  was called “Dalda 13”.  Vyarawalla was definitely not known by that name.

Dalda, anyway, is a cheap, hydrogenated, vegetable oil. It is the poor man’s substitute for the Real Thing.  And that is something Homai Vyarawalla was not. She is no cheap substitute for the West’s Photography Heroes and Masters  The grand old lady was Pure Desi Ghee. She was, and is, the “Mummy” of Indian Photography.