Mário and his Times
Mário’s long tryst with Mumbai began at the Times. He had spent his graduation years at St Xavier’s College, but saw the paper up-close on his return to the city in 1952. With 18 years of visual diaries under his belt, he visited newspaper and business offices. He began as a freelance cartoonist with The Current and sold his handcrafted postcards of the city landmarks at the Flora Fountain to make extra money.
The 26-year-old Goan cartoonist’s versatility, spontaneity, and detail created a significant buzz. Before long, editor C.R. Mandy and art director Walter Langhammer invited him to the Times group of publications. The Illustrated Weekly of India was his first stop. Soon, sister publications like Cocktail, Femina, Filmfare, The Evening News, and The Economic Times began to use Mário’s skilful depictions of movement and sound, often featuring his trademark dog.
The rest is history. Mário would soon rank among the best of India’s cartoonists. The job seemed easy, and everything grist to his mill, but finding humour was no mean task. ‘There are times when you don’t feel funny, or may not feel like laughing, but still have to produce a funny cartoon – like a clown who has got to make people laugh all the time, although he doesn’t feel like laughing,’ said Mário.
Add to it the fact that political bigwigs were breathing down his neck—and he had a sure recipe for disillusionment. Mário learned early on that lampooning power involved high risk. When he toned down the humour, cartooning became a ‘serious’ business. ‘Cartoonists are very serious people, and cartoons, no laughing matter,’ he quipped. That’s when Mário began to see himself mostly as a social caricaturist, turning his lens to fashions, crowded trains, music, films, the bustling life of Irani cafés, and so on!
Past the initial scramble for work, Mário began to yearn for the blissful freedom of his diary sketching. He travelled to Portugal and England, drawing merrily. He did cartoons for Mad magazine and ITV and was featured in Punch. He made fast money and friends, but most importantly, his idol Searle’s injunction — ‘Stay on in England, but stop copying me!’— infused him with the confidence to go by himself.
On Mário’s return in 1962, R.K. Laxman, the reigning deity of The Times of India, ‘subtly ensured that the pedestal was not for sharing,’ says Bachi Karkaria. Mário made his mark… ‘His hilarious work is packed with characters from the contemporary scene and his greatest gift is that he makes us laugh at ourselves,’ said a review in a 1960 issue Cocktail, adding, ‘His illustrations too have polished perfection and have been such a success that all our writers want Mario to illustrate their work.’
The period saw the rise of Mário’s characters to iconic status: the efficient secretary Ms Fonseca, the Boss and his crony Godbole; the corrupt politician Bundaldass and his sidekick Moonswamy; the glamorous Bollywood star Rajni Nimbupani and co-star Balraj Balram. For generations of Indians, these characters were more than ink on paper; they remain a mirror to the nation’s quirks, even if changing sensibilities put a negative spin on some of them.
In 1964, the Times of India Press published Mário’s book of sketches, Goa with Love. Successive editors of the Weekly—Khushwant Singh, M.V. Kamath and Pritish Nandy—held him in high esteem. While his literary background and travels gave him a broad outlook, he wore none of that on his sleeve. Vinod Mehta said that Mário abhorred ‘intellectual talk’, his forte being ‘the accumulation of trivia judiciously and harmoniously composed.’
By and by, Mário got excited about capturing moods and ambiences for his pictorial travelogues. To make time for travel, he first joined a new tabloid, The Midday, where his close friend Behram 'Busybee' Contractor was the editor; and then took to freelancing for The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, founded by humorist Busybee. Countries around the globe invited him to hold solo exhibitions. He also illustrated books for the likes of Ruskin Bond, Dom Moraes, Manohar Malgonkar in Bombay, and for several writers in Goa. There was perhaps no other Indian cartoonist whose works turned into murals that now adorn the urban landscape.
In 1996, after Mário and wife Habiba retired to the quiet of Loutulim, the quintessential Goan artist was instrumental in setting up a museum of Christian art at Rachol (now shifted to Old Goa) and restoring the Reis Magos Fort. But the homecoming far from ended his love story with Mumbai, as he continued infusing The Afternoon Despatch & Courier and The Economic Times with his peerless humour.
The Times was thus his first and last stop. In 2011, India grieved when the icon that had humoured it in good times and in bad fell silent… Thankfully, Mário still provides a timeless window into the local and the global. He is an artist for all times and climes.
