Those were the days

The late Mario de Miranda’s latest book is his illustrated diary of 1951, when he was a young man in his village in Goa. Veenu Sandhu is delighted, by book and man.

Mario de Miranda was asleep. It was past noon and like a true Goan, the artist was having a siesta. I had called at the wrong time. From noon to 3 or 3.30 pm every day, Goa takes a nap. How could I have forgotten, I thought, as I apologised over the phone to his wife Habiba Hyderi.

I called again later, and Miranda’s own deep voice told me kindly on the phone that “I have a lot of work to do, but you can take whatever you need from any of my books.”

 

This was in May, a day or two after Miranda’s 85th birthday. I had called him hoping that he would draw us a cartoon of a busy club scene, for an article on India’s oldest and most exclusive clubs. Could there have been anybody better than Mario Miranda to capture the essence and spirit of club life, elitist and otherwise?

But Miranda was busy even at 85. This was no surprise. What did come as a surprise was that such an accomplished artist was so willing to share his work, just like that, without charging a rupee. His publisher Gerard da Cunha of Architecture Autonomous promptly sent us some options. They added magic to our page as only Mario Miranda illustrations can.

During my two-minute phone conversation with Miranda, the following image manifested in my mind: a broad-shouldered, square-faced man sitting at his desk with his head buried in his sketchbook, drawing furiously.

A new book containing that very image, drawn by Miranda’s own hand, recently arrived at the office. The Life of Mario: 1951 is Miranda’s diary of the year 1951, and it captures the story of his life in Goa through that whole year. He was known as a man of few words so his diary is, true to character, not a written but a graphic account of each day’s events, from January 1 to December 31, 1951.

In 1951 Miranda is 25 years old. (Well, he’s 24 when he begins the diary and turns 25 on May 2). He has graduated from St Xavier’s College, Bombay, and is taking a sabbatical in his native village of Loutolim, with his gang of friends and cousins. Life is as busy as it can get for a 25-year-old — going to picnics, movies and the theatre, organising dances and clandestine parties, taking long, leisurely walks, sometimes in the pouring rain, or frequenting cafés that allow credit.

But before the diary begins, a note from its editor, which is interspersed with illustrations by Miranda, offers a glimpse of the beginnings of his unique style: a pencil-and-crayon “Family Portrait”, drawn by Miranda in 1936 when he was only 10. The lines are sure and steady, and illustrate the remarkable ability of the artist who could be an observer even while he was part of the picture.

Mario: 1951 is the last of four diaries that Miranda wrote in that period. Three earlier ones covered the years 1950, 1947 and 1946. Yet the diary of 1951 is the first to be published because it captures the most significant phase of Miranda’s artistic development. It’s here that one finds Miranda experimenting with different styles, using pen and ink, or playing confidently with colour, or even moving away from cartoons that would make you smile.

For instance, the diary entry of November 2, Miranda’s mother’s birthday, is a pen-and-ink drawing titled “Beggars”. Here he brings out the wretched destitution and desperation of the men and women who have come to eat the lunch that is served for the poor after the feast. Another entry, for August 3, shows a naked woodcutter and establishes Miranda as an artist with a sound understanding of the human anatomy.

“Mario was not limited to any one style,” says da Cunha, who worked with the artist for 10 years and has collected and archived thousands of his drawings and brought out several of his books. “He was three or four artists in one. He worked in crayon, pen-and-ink, watercolour; he was a cartoonist and a painter.”

The drawings in Miranda’s earlier diaries, of 1946 and 1947, are mainly in black-and-white and capture his days in Bombay, then in the throes of the freedom struggle. But the 1951 diary is different. Not only does this book tell us a lot about Miranda, the man, it also gives us a glimpse into the lives of his friends and relatives and of the Goan village.

Miranda, we learn, was a complete movie buff and would travel long distances to watch even the most forgettable of films — it didn’t matter what language they were in. So, on August 9, he watches Hanuman Patal Vijay and writes, “I don’t know what that means,” and on September 10, he takes his friend Bandu along as an interpreter for the “Indian film Rimzim” which in fact is the 1949 movie Rimjhim. A day before that he’s out watching The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend starring Betty Grable, Cesar Romero and Rudy Vallee. Then he’s off to watch an Italian film, Fausto and later the Portuguese movie Camões. He also loved to dance, and sat sulking in bed on December 8 because the “dammed flu” made him miss the Medical ball.

Then there are delightful series, like the “Village Types”, the “City Types” or “Shakespeare in the Village” which capture, through portraits or typical village scenes, the absurdities that are often part of everyday life. The village gossips and the clergy are particularly at the receiving end of Miranda’s pen (or brush, as the case may be), because they frown on the carefree and mischievous ways of the youth. The diary also contains black-and-white photographs of Miranda and his friends, which feature alongside some of the drawings.

Written in Portuguese originally, the diary has been translated into English. “I don’t think Mario’s Portuguese was all that good,” says da Cunha, a smile evident in his voice. “The translation wasn’t reading all that well, so we went with the gist and the essence of what he’d written.”

Remembering the “very quiet, very pleasant and very humane” man, he says, “I would often go to his house with the guy who does the scanning and my driver, and everybody would sit with Mario at the same table and dine. He was very egalitarian.”

The Life of Mario: 1951 is yet to be officially released. Miranda once said he had forgotten what the diary looked like and used to be embarrassed about it. In the entry for June 6, he draws himself having a nightmare — his diary has been discovered and he is being burnt at the stake. What look like black-cassocked priests are dancing around the bonfire.

A week ago, the man behind the diary signed out. But da Cunha promises that we will see more of Miranda in the years to come, as his other three diaries are published.

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THE LIFE OF MARIO: 1951
Author: Mario de Miranda
Editor: Gerard da Cunha
Publisher: Architecture Autonomous
Pages: 224
Price: Rs 395