Biography

- Manohar Malgaonkar

If Mario himself chose to make a living in a profession that his parents could not have envisaged, his sons too have taken up careers that neither he nor Habiba could have predicted. The elder, Raul has become a hair stylist, and has gone off to the Mecca of his calling, the U.S.A. and there set up a flourishing practice.

The younger son Rishaad has specialized as a designer-decorator. Both Raul and Rishaad are married.

So Mario Miranda having reached an age at which most self-employed people retire has neither given up working nor even reduced his workload. He goes on, not only keeping up with his routine cartoons, but rarely refusing commissioned work.
He wears his years with ease. Fame, or at any rate, recognition of his artistic talents has come to him in the form of numerous awards, citations and trophies. The nation awarded him the title of Padma Shri and a Padma Bhushan in 2003. He is one of the few internationally known Goans.

He has travelled widely and sat down in cafes, nightclubs, marketplaces to draw scenes from local life in cities which to most of us are only names, such as Sao Paolo or Macau. He has held exhibitions of his pictures in most of the well-known art capitals of the civilized world.

Returning home has not meant for Mario Miranda a retreat from work. On the contrary he has taken on some extra work after his homecoming; activities that have nothing to do with his profession. There were issues that he had always felt strongly about, such as animal welfare and environmental purity. To these causes he has added what he calls the “Heritage of Goa”.

He is known to have joined demonstrations to try and save some of Panjim’s noble trees, or written letters to newspapers about the pollution of Goa’s once-sparkling rivers.

Some Goans started agitating about the need for saving priceless old artefacts of old churches and monuments, and Mario Miranda gave this movement both direction and muscle. He took the lead in organizing this group of activities into a society called Amigos de Rachol. They sent appeals to the church authorities to donate their religious antiques to this society so that they could be kept safe in one place which would eventually form a Museum of Christian Art at the Seminary at Rachol.