Mario de Miranda
Compiled by gerard da cunha
Architecture Autonomous, Rs 2,700
Mario Miranda’s carnival of comedy has travelled to every nook and naughty corner of the world
This book makes you do the unthinkable: thank Vasco da Gama for setting foot on Indian soil. And his successor Albuquerque for shifting Portugal’s Asian capital from Kochi to Goa. Lisbon’s men gave Mario Miranda a great place to grow up and outgrow. They packed into the 16th century Konkan land every sign of a European conquest. Prelates and proctors to tailcoats and trousseaus. Seasoned by the West Coast sun through some 400 years, this was the landscape that greeted the six-year-old when dad, Daman’s administrador, retired and the family moved back to the ancestral home in Loutolim. The house itself, then over 250 years old with 30-odd rooms, was a world to explore. A Eurasian galaxy was waiting outside.
The boy loved the wicked pencil. He began a diary of doodles that grew into sketches, portraits, caricatures and cartoons. A spread of visual parody the European Empire builder hadn’t bargained for. A spread that marks Mario out as our only outdoor cartoonist — a comic artist more than a cartoonist. One who learned firsthand from what he saw around him. Not from the printed cartoons of venerable seniors as is customary. An early influence of Ronald Searle the master himself talked him out of. The acolyte was told to go and find his signature tune. He did and how! Goa gave him enough to look at and a challenge few deadline-dreading cartoonists would touch. To include rather than exclude. Mario is so inclusive that when you step into a café with his wall-scale mural, the comic frame grabs you. Grin like Godbole and bear it.
... contd.
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