12 July,2011 07:17 AM IST | | Hemal Ashar
World famous cartoonist Mario Miranda's work gets website, friends aim to stop pilferage and make it an authorised avenue to buy Mario originals
It is drawing people that cartoonist Mario Miranda excelled at, his observations of the idiosyncrasies of human nature was extraordinary and his pen captured that all in dazzling detail and quirky humour.
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So, it is fitting that a clutch of his favourite subjects people from his native Goa have come together with the fierce commitment to keep his work alive and bring Mario Miranda to an even wider audience to the world, through the web.
The website, https://mariodemiranda.com, which has come up recently is an offline repository of the cartoonist's formidable oeuvre of work. Like Panji (Goa) based Gurunandan Bhatt, maker of the website says, "We wanted to establish a definitive archive of Mario's work.
This is the authorised place where one can buy and of course look at some of Mario's work. Mario has what one could call a laissez faire approach and because of this people have pilfered his work with scant regard (and we can add rupees!) for his intellectual rights.
We have also have Mario books online, which people can buy, including of course the seminal tome on Mario a book comprising articles and his sketches."
Says Gerard Da Cunha, Mario's friend and architect of the Goa firm, Architecture Autonomous, "The website is an extension of what we have done offline.
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It all began with a comprehensive book we compiled on him. It is a 2.5 kg book, which has articles on Mario and a huge compilation of his sketches and cartoons, which have been collected from everywhere.
The book is on sale both offline at the gallery and one can also order it on online. We have put up a vast collection of his work at the Mario Gallery.
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The compilation of his drawings began in 2005 where we sourced and digitised 8,000 works of Mario from different sources.
We are steadily adding on to this collection. The physical space called the Mario Gallery has become the umbrella for all further initiatives.
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The Mario Gallery is located seven-km north of Panjim close to Porvorim. It is in a very picturesque location next to the Museum Houses of Goa and two schools. We have 2,500 visitors each year."
Bhatt adds, "The Gallery has 10,000 odd assets of Mario's work and is Gerard's original idea. In fact, whenever Gerard takes a Mario exhibition outside Goa, to Mumbai or Delhi for instance, he gets a tremendous response from people who are eager to buy Mario merchandise. Yet, what about those who have no access to these exhibitions or the Gallery in Goa for that matter?
The website is an effort to bring them closer to his work. The comprehensive book on Mario is on the website where the reader can download it and read about Mario online.
He cannot see the cartoons and sketches though. We thought people are more interested in seeing Mario's graphics than reading text. So, we have put Mario prints online and Gerard has priced them very competitively so people can buy them."
Says Shankar Shinde from Tivim in North Goa, who is also in charge of the website, "The initiative is a way of bringing his work to the world via the web. I have also worked extensively along with the others on collecting and collating Mario's work, going to Mario's residence in Loutolim along with Gerard to collect some of his works for the Gallery and the book."
Mario, the creator of delightful characters like Miss Nimbu Pani and Miss Fonseca, is, says, Gerard, "remarkably modest about his work.
He gave us some material for the book but we decided to try and collect a much larger body of his work. We went to many sources including libraries and homes and also visited Mumbai where a lot of his work is located. We digitised and reference the collection and are still adding on to it."
Says Sweta Mashelkar from Torda, in North Goa, "I look after the Mario Gallery, taking the visitors around and look after sales. We mainly sell prints and postcards. We also have a mail-to-order section. Some proceeds of the sales go to Mario. When you are in the Gallery, you realise what a following Mario has.
People from outside Goa, everywhere in fact, come into the one-year-old Gallery to see and buy his work, we have visitors from Holland, the UK, and it is a very eclectic mix." Gerard adds, "The Gallery helps Mario financially in a big way and also showcases his great artistic ability."
Govind Naik, from Torda has designed (done the layout) of several Mario books like Bombay, Travels, Cartoons - I and Cartoons-II, which are available at the Gallery and on the website.
Naik says the physical space and the online venture should now work in tandem to bring both kinds of visitors, those physically present and those on the net closer to Mario.
Gerard adds that the Gallery has a head start over the website since it has launched much earlier, "the website has just started functioning and we are still to get a great response, but we do hope it will increase sales."
The professionals believe the initiatives, even small in scale will grow into something much bigger eventually.
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The Gallery and its online counterpart will become the one stop shop for everything Mario. Asked if there was an effort to make other merchandise like Mario print T-shirts, mugs or key rings, typical memorabilia which would sell well in Goa with so much tourist traffic, Gerard says that, "we all are working professionals so we do not have the time to pursue this with so much aggression.
Yet, the others and I agree that, Mario's work must be kept alive. Bringing out long overdue books and the prints will help.
We are in the process of bringing out certain of his graphic diaries, which he kept from childhood. We hope to bring out a diary called 1951 in October at the comic festival in Mumbai this year. We will then follow this with 1950, 1947 and 1946. These diaries are historical documents of life in Goa and Mumbai."
Eventually, though, Gerard wants the Gallery to evolve into a full-fledged Mario Museum, a repository of the 85-year-old Mario Miranda's incandescent talent that shines like a beacon for future generations.
Says Gerard, the architect, "being an architect, one of my most important quests is something called an Urban Square. This is under development in a picturesque valley where I live and work.
This Square houses the Museum Houses of Goa, which are museums showcasing Indo-Portuguese architecture and two schools run by my wife. Now, I want to add a Museum of Indian Architecture and the Mario Museum to this Urban Square.
Highlights
Mario's website is an online offshoot of the already existing Mario Gallery in Goa.
The Gallery and website is the definitive one stop shop for Mario originals.u00a0
Buying from these two avenues helps the cartoonist as some amount of the sales proceeds go to him.
There are plans to turn the Gallery into a full-fledged museum in the future.
About the Website
The website is: https://www.mariodemiranda.com/
This is an initiative by Mario's friends.
The site is a small step to redress the huge amount of pilfering of Mario's work by merchandisers.
It showcases Mario's work right from the age of six when he used to draw on notebook pages.
It contains the full text of writings on Mario by Manohar Malgaonkar and others.u00a0
Mario's illustrations are made available as prints.
