Biography

- Manohar Malgaonkar

In 1988, Mario received one of the most unusual offers for a working holiday: to join two other Indian artists, Jatin Das and K.V. Haridasan for a trip to East Germany and meet some of their major cartoonists. This was like venturing into forbidden land. East Germany was in the Russian zone behind the Iron Curtain. Mario and his colleagues visited the major art centres. They were wined and dined wherever they went and finally held a joint exhibition of their work in East Berlin.

And as though these hectic activities were not enough to keep up with, Mario also found it necessary to change his job. Behram Contractor, left Mid-Day to publish The Afternoon Dispatch & Courier and Mario joined The Afternoon as a freelance cartoonist.

Over the years Mario had tended to become more and more of a freelance, turning out more drawings than cartoons, and the cartoons he did, he could do from wherever he happened to be, he did not have to be tied down to Bombay any longer. As such, to go on living in Bombay in a rented apartment while they were also spending large sums on keeping the Loutolim house in good repair just did not make sense. Why not go and live in Goa? Habiba, for her part thought it would be an excellent move, but it was Mario who demurred. Finally Habiba and common sense, won.

So they took their dogs and tortoises and their furniture and paintings and went to live in Goa, regretfully giving up what they had together built over thirty years, for a place where Mario’s forefathers had lived for three hundred.