New Delhi, May 2 (PTI) From overcrowded village buses to the chaotic rhythms of joint-family life, from Goa's languid lanes to Mumbai's buzzing cafés, cartoonist Mario Miranda captured it all with an unblinking eye.
Miranda, who would have turned 100 this Saturday, was known for drawing lively, detailed sketches on everyday life -- crowded buses, nosy neighbours, gossiping aunties, and chaotic family gatherings -- with humour, sharp observation, and warmth rather than cynicism.
Born Mario Joao Carlos do Rosario de Britto a Miranda in 1926, he instinctively took to drawing on walls and the floor of their house as a toddler, only to be handed a blank book and a box of pencils by his foresighted mother. The rest has been assigned to the pages of history, or, in his case, to cartoon strips.
A keen meditation on his surroundings, Miranda's style has motivated the works of many who came after, and his murals continue to adorn walls in Goa, his sketches capturing the quintessential Goan spirit of the pubs of the coastal state.
'The World of Mario', an Instagram handle curated by the Mario Gallery, is observing the birth centenary of the maestro through a series of posts, chronicling Miranda's life and works, from being a curious child in Goa's Loutolim to the busy streets of 'Bombay' and beyond.
His early years in Goa, which he would draw in his diaries, later shaped his career and vocabulary as church processions, weddings, choir practices, family evenings, and village life became recurring themes in his works.
"In a way these drawings are biographical. I kept diaries of drawings instead of words," Miranda once said, as recorded by 'The World of Mario'.
After studying history at St Xavier's College in Mumbai, he eventually took up cartooning full time at the Current and later at The Illustrator Weekly of India.
Over the years, his socially-conscious works, pen-and-ink sketches in monochrome, have appeared in national and international publications, including the Economic Times, Femina, and The Times of India, where he continued to work till late 2000s.
Some of his characters would frequently reappear in his subtle satire on Indian bureaucracy, politics, and social commentaries.
An Anglo-Indian secretary Miss Fonseca, typical office clerk Godbole, and actress Rajni Nimbupani would visit Miranda's panels but were "no mere props for ventilating the day's news comment," according to political cartoonist E P Unny.
Unny wrote in his obituary of Miranda in 2011 in the Indian Express that his characters "came to life with pure fun and entertained readers incredibly enough through the deprived decades of a third world democracy".
"His richly detailed comic frames had no mandatory starkness that marked the more familiar news cartoon. No wonder he missed no chance to take off to any corner of the world to escape the newsroom tyranny. To be with people and places, which was where his art at its best was made," Unny had written.
Miranda's drawings would often project a harmless take on the absurdities and contradictions of people -- a travel agent showing a room with a view to a couple but the window opens to a hoarding saying "lovely landscape", or a doctor asking his patient, "Before I take up your case, I would like to feel your purse… I mean… your pulse!"
Unlike his style, Miranda would also occasionally sketch political commentaries -- Jawaharlal Nehru reading a book of poetry while three rough men, representing the US, the UK, and the USSR, play with a globe, is one such take on India's contemporary foreign policy.
By the late 60s and continuing till the 80s, Miranda began turning his illustrations into books.
'A Little World of Humour' (1968) was his first major book that captured everyday absurdities in a collection of cartoons. He published books on Goa and its people -- 'Goa Agogo' (1971) and 'Goa With Love' (1974) -- before turning his observations towards the United States following a visit to the nation, in 'Mario’s American Sketchbook' (1975).
He also illustrated books by Dom Moraes ('A Journey to Goa'), Manohar Malgonkar ('Inside Goa'), and Mario Cabral e Sa ('Legends of Goa'), along with a number of children's books.
Journalist Vinod Mehta, in an undated blog on the Mario Gallery website, wrote about an "eccentricity" of Miranda that also reflected in his commitment to his craft -- cartooning.
Mehta, who once spent 16 days "closeted with Mario" on a foreign land, suspected the illustrator to be a "latent kleptomaniac" as he would "surreptitiously pocket" a beer coaster or a menu card every time they were in a pub or a theatre or a restaurant.
"So, the next time he withdrew I followed him (we were then at a French restaurant) and found him near the kitchen, hand cupped, eyes frenetic, pen busy. He was taking notes.
"The notes were a few hasty lines which to my untutored eye meant very little. For Mario, however, they represented homework, the germ of a future drawing. He told me that, that was the way he worked," Mehta recalled in the post.
Miranda received the Padma Shri in 1988, the Padma Bhushan in 2002, and the Padma Vibhushan posthumously in 2012.