Mumbai: 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.
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, http://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.
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."
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 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.
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?
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."
Mario, the creator of delightful characters like Miss Nimbu Pani and Miss Fonseca, is, says, Gerard, "remarkably modest about his work.
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.
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
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.
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, http://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.
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."
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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.
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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.
Advertisement
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?
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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."
Advertisement
Mario, the creator of delightful characters like Miss Nimbu Pani and Miss Fonseca, is, says, Gerard, "remarkably modest about his work.
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.
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
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.
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