Still tickling the Feni bone

As Delhi plays host to a two-day Comic Convention from Saturday, a look at the life of Mario Miranda, iconic cartoonist, who moved from Mumbai to Goa and at 84, refuses to bow to the frailties of age

At a recent launch of five of his books in Goa, illustrator, artist and cartoonist Mario Miranda, though frail at 84, was naturally the centre of attention. Hovering on the sidelines for a while, I finally went up and introduced myself.


Mario Miranda's drawings on the Caf ufffd Mondegar wall at Colaba

I had done a couple of stories on Mario, interviewed him over the years on his restoration projects when he headed the Goa chapter of heritage foundation INTACH though he was unlikely to remember.

When I said, "journalist" Mario's witty comeback was, "Ah, so you are the one who has been creating all that trouble." I laughed.

Despite the physical toll, time had done little to dim the humour and astuteness of India's most admired cartoonist and illustrator.

Party man
Getting around and meeting people has always been inspiration for Mario's work. And he isn't about to give that up, if he can help it. So, Mario and wife Habiba make it to as many social occasions as they can, driving miles into the capital and further, determined to surmount the physical deterrents. "People say I am a party goer, but I love people, it is a question of moving around and meeting people. I learn a lot from watching others," he explains.

People watcher
One is reminded of just how sharp a people watcher Mario is, when going through his recent books, released in January 2011. Mario's Bombay has hilarious, animated studies of people ufffdtourists, gourmets, high society types, people at railway stations, the Bombay dabbawalla, the BEST bus conductor and so on. From 1953 until 1977, Mario drew, cartooned and illustrated for the Times group publications ufffd the Weekly, Evening News, Filmfare, Femina, The Economic Times, producing a vast body of work. His funny and witty takes on the politics of that era; provide an incredible insight, though he has always been more a social cartoonist than a political one. His sketches in Maharashtra school texts like the Bal Bharati stamped his art deep into the pysche of an entire generation.

Filching Mario
In Goa, one is surrounded by his art, every souvenir shop stocks curios with Mario's drawings on them, much of it copied without his permission. "It is really a shame the way people copy him, without paying him any royalty," says fellow villager and musician Emiliano da Cruz. People tend to visit Mario and casually seek oral permissions to use this or that drawing, and before long, a whole line of products is out in the market. "He's always been generous to a fault, he can never say no, and a lot of people have taken advantage of that," says da Cruz.

Plagiarism points
Mario himself shrugs off the plagiarism, and has never made a big deal about it. "It can be flattering when the artist improves on my drawing, but it's annoying when the humour is bad," he jokes instead. It's not unusual to visit a restaurant and sit beneath a blowup of Mario's drawings, sometimes done without his permission. It suddenly struck me that I was in the same house and village where Mario began his calling as an illustrator and cartoonist.
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The story goes that an irrepressible young Mario was given a notebook by his mother to keep him from drawing on the house walls. Though Mario opted out of the JJ School of Art after a single day, choosing to pursue a graduate course in the history of English Literature at St Xavier's College, Mumbai, he returned to Loutolim to sketch numerous diaries that survive today as a chronicle of those colonial times.

The diaries also got him his first job doing cartoons for The Current and he's always been grateful to its then editor, D F Karaka. A year later, he joined The Times of India group. Young and restless, he left for a year's stint in Portugal and a couple of years in London, before returning to the Times.

"If I have any knowledge of humour and cartooning, it is due to my mixing with the English cartoonists mainly in London. I was lucky enough to meet Shultz and Sir Ronald Searle, whose work I admire most."

London return
"Mario's best cartooning work is really the work he did at The Illustrated Weekly of India when he returned from London," opines Gerard da Cunha, publisher and editor of six books on Mario's work, including a 285-page glossy magnum opus on the artist, published in 2008. The second leap in Mario's career came when he toured the USA on a USIS invitation in 1972. Mario's drawings and illustrations from that trip resulted in an exhibition that sold out. Since then, his stature as an illustrator grew, more so abroad, and he has been invited to sketch in over two dozen countries, including Spain in 2007, when he was 81. The catalogue and book of that last trip and exhibition is as good as any of his earlier works. A couple of years later, Mario's health took a turn. "Everybody who sees my work, prefers my illustrations and drawings to my cartoons," he points out.

Private collection
Da Cunha began a search for Mario's work around 2006, delving into private collections and archives, apart from Mario's personal collection. The result is a collection of 8,000 prints that are on view at a small museum in Goa. It's a work in progress; a larger museum is in the offing. There are only small gaps in the archive of his work, says da Cunha, some of it done for the MiD DAY and Afternoon Despatch and Courier, calendars he illustrated for the National Safety Council and some of his work for Filmfare ufffd to add to the 30 volumes of material already collected. In it, are all the memorable cartoon characters he created ufffd the Bollywood heroine Rajani Nimbupani, the matinee star Balraj Balram, the archetypal politician Bundlebass, and the office secretary, Miss Fonseca.

Missing originals
"If you look at his vast body of work, you realise just what a genius he is, he's so versatile, and his drawings are done in different styles. Sadly, he is recognised by the public only as a cartoonist, because of his huge popularity then, but his drawings mark him as a great artist," says da Cunha. The originals of much of Mario's cartoons are lost, some by his own carelessness Mario rues. Some of it when the family shifted out of Mumbai in 1996. "Sometimes, you take a lot of trouble over a drawing and that's the end, you don't see its lasting value. It goes to the press and is completely lost," Mario says.

City buzz
It wasn't easy to move out of Mumbai recalls wife Habiba, who for many years missed the buzz of the city, her friends and the social circuit they were part of there. "We couldn't go back, we only ever rented a place there," she says of their flat in Colaba's Oyster apartments building.

Habiba had been steadily restoring the Loutolim house, buying back family furniture heirlooms over the years. While they may have found living in Goa a tad quiet initially, Mario never ever wanted for commissions.

He kept right on with his assignments, with The Economic Times, illustrating books and book covers. "Mario is unbelievably popular, a much loved guy. Even now, people clamour to have him illustrate their books or draw something," says da Cunha, who took the Mario exhibition to several Indian cities, only to find a steady flow of viewers, not just the glitterati set that normally frequent art shows.

Endearing artist
Connoisseurs have pointed out it is Mario's humour and lack of malice in depicting situations and people that endears him to his audience. Goa-based cartoonist and friend Alexyz calls him India's ambassador of humour. At the apex of his career, Mario still found time to introduce Alexyz around Mumbai's newspaper world, helping him get a break in Sportsweek. He recalls, "Above all, he's a great human being, and helps rank juniors if he can," says Alexyz.

Fort restoration
Over the past decade, Mario has used his influence in many spheres, helping where he could. He was instrumental in launching the Museum of Christian Art in Goa. In Loutolim, he helped the local school and would have done more for the village if red tape had not stalled his plans, says his friend Emiliano da Cruz. His plans to see the Reis Magos Fort restored, for which he worked a great deal, may yet come through.

Mumbai memories
Meanwhile, one senses Mario will not give up, he gives life to poet Dylan Thomas's line: Rage, rage against the dying of the light/But do not go gentle into that goodnight (about growing weak and frail with old age). He reminisces about evenings in Mumbai's coffee house culture, now long gone, the wonderful years he spent working with Pritish Nandy, Khushwant Singh, C R Mandy, Walter Langhammer, Behram and Farzana Contractor, and friend Dom Moraes. "I was lucky to have the encouragement and support of great editors. I guess I happened to be at the right place at the right time," he says.

Going on
He does not only lock himself in the past either, happy to engage with young artists. "There are a lot of bright young people. I like to meet them, many new acquaintances who have become a part of my life."Giving up is not in Mario's lexicon, it would seem. "I would like to paint, I never had the opportunity really to paint oil painting or water colours even. So when I have the chance of doing something like that I jump at the idea," he says. He's also got plans for yet another book.

Cartooning is serious business

The Comic Con India is a huge opportunity for both cartoonists and comic book artists and publishers to come together and chalk out ways and means on how to produce more comic books, publish cartoons and generally take cartooning forward," says V G Narendra, managing trustee Indian Institute of Cartoonists, which is based in Bangalore.

Narendra says though, "things are moving with many more people drawing cartoons and comic books, creators of cartoons still struggle to find publishers and people willing to print them, even though many of them are very popular."

This ten-year-old organisation holds workshops, demonstrations, seminars to promote the art of cartooning and considers a 3.5-year-old gallery that it started exclusively for cartoonists as one of its more sterling achievements.

Says Narendra, "We had a recent exhibition at the gallery our 50th one in fact, a golden jubilee where works of cartoonists like R K Laxman, Mario Miranda, Unni and Keshav were displayed. Though they are taken lightly, comics are very important, they are art works of the future because they give serious messages in a comic form."

For the trustee, "The earlier generation has grown up with foreign comics. Snoopy, Calvin & Hobbes, Archie & His Gang and many others were part of their childhood.

They may be more familiar with these comics than with Indian toons simply because they did not exist so many years ago.

Now, we need Indian creations like these, so that future generations can have comics as part of their childhood reading experience. Characters also need to be consistently drawn and published to stick in reader's minds," finished Narendra.

Pune-based P C Balakrishna, animator, artist and writer of children's books is out with a comic called Bomy. Bomy is a toddler who cannot speak, "he imagines things, like a child would. I had drawn this 30 years ago, I finally found a publisher because he too, is a young man with a small son, he understood this work."

Balakrishna says, "Indian comics must become contemporary, the comic form is a great way for kids to learn." Incidentally, former tennis champion, Monica Seles first thwacked tennis balls as a little kid, because her father (a cartoonist) drew comic characters on them.

Comic Con India
The first annual Indian comic convention called the Indian Comic Con India will be held in Delhi between February 19 and February 20 at Delhi Haat from 11 am to 8 pm. "In addition to a book fair that will feature comic book and graphic art publishers, etcetera, we will host workshops every hour, throughout the two days," says organiser Jatin Varma of Twenty Onwards Media. For details, log on to https://comicconindia.com/