Reclusive cartoonist Mario Miranda on missing Dom Moares and Behram Contractor and his next book on Spain
It took some chasing. Actually, a lot of it. When requested for an interview, Mario Miranda had said candidly,
“Frankly, the prospect doesn’t excite me.’ Calls to his residence went unanswered, as did visits to his ancestral house in South Goa. Finally, he was spotted at a function in Panaji, nursing his glass of wine and chatting with friends. Finally, as the last of dinner plates were being carried away, he beckoned.
“Fire away,” he said, finishing the last of his fish curry and wine. When asked whether he’d been to Mumbai of late and he answered, “I haven’t, actually. I feel very lost and lonely in Mumbai now. All my friends are gone – Dom Moares, Behram Contractor. They are no more. I can’t seem to keep coming to Mumbai without them. So I prefer to stay at home, in Loutolim, Goa. I have my books, I have my wine and friends drop in all the time.
Miranda is known for becoming a recluse, hardly attending public functions or giving interviews, and he admits saying, “I don’t feel the need to go out anywhere. My friends keep telling me to go on a holiday to a hill station or something, but I have lost that urge now.”
That doesn’t mean he hasn’t travelled though. “I was recently in Cuba and then in Spain. I loved that country.
My next book will be on Spain, because it’s a special country. I love decadence, and beauty. Spain has both of those.” Doesn’t he want to do any more books on Goa? “No, I have done enough of those, don’t you think?” He pauses and says, “Maybe, I should do something on the new Goa. The youthful Goa, one that has changed a lot, and yet has some of the old characteristics that all Goans enjoy even now - the young are changing us in ways we never thought were possible.”
What does he think of today’s Goa then? “We Goans are too suspicious of outsiders. There are so many people who have come from outside and are in fact preserving our heritage, something that native don’t seem to be doing as much.”
Miranda admits that he misses the Goa of yore, when people were ‘friendlier, and closer’. “I miss that sense of community - there was a common thread running between people, which doesn’t exist anymore. But, then times are changing,” he ends.
j_shilpa@dnaindia.net
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