Biography

- Manohar Malgaonkar

Mario Miranda has often told interviewers just how much he loves to travel, fly to distant cities, “Especially when someone else is footing the bill,” he adds.

Well, that first time he ever went abroad, no one else was footing the bill; nor was he in a state of mind to enjoy the journey itself. He was full of apprehensions about what lay in store for him in Lisbon. He had arranged that his sister Fatima, who lived in London, should send him around £400, which would enable him to go on to Paris and study Art. There were all sorts of difficulties about sending money to other countries and everything depended on whether Fatima had somehow found a way to make it available for him in Lisbon, where his brother Peter lived. Peter was to hold the money till Mario arrived.

In his hand-baggage he carried a couple of his diaries as well a thick folder containing most of his published drawings and cartoons. They would establish his credentials as a professional cartoonist, and make it easy to find work in Paris to enable him to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts.

But all his hopes were dashed to the ground when, soon after arrival in Lisbon, Peter gave him the news that the money had not come.

This was shattering news indeed. He had pinned his hopes for the future on his being able to reach Paris. Now Paris remained as far away as ever. From here, almost within reach of his goal, he would have to go back to India and report to The Times office in a couple of weeks; pretend that he had spent his leave in Goa itself.
Expatriate Goans tend to hang together and are keen to do something for a fellow-Goan in trouble, and in Lisbon Mario met many friends he had known in Goa. Some of them were keen that he should stay on in Lisbon. One contact led to another and Mario was told to report to the Gulbenkian Foundation which offered him a scholarship that would enable him to stay in Lisbon for a whole year.

If Lisbon had been kind to Mario, he too was grateful to Lisbon. From then on, it becomes one of his favourite cities and he has made it the subject of some of his best large-scale vistas. You can see them today bubbling with life.