One of India's foremost cartoonist and illustrators Mario de Miranda passed away in his ancestral home near Panaji on Sunday (11.12.2011) after a prolonged illness. He was 85.
Miranda had been a regular with The Times of India and other newspapers in Mumbai, including The Economic Times, though he got his popularity with his works published in The Illustrated Weekly of India.
Born-1926
Died-11 December 2011
Nationality-Indian
Occupation-Cartoonist
He was born in Daman to Goan Catholic parents of Goud Saraswat Brahmin origin. His ancestral surname was Sardessai, before the family converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1750s. At an early age when his mother saw him drawing his home walls, she brought him a blank book, which he calls his "Diary". He even started getting into trouble at school, for sketching Catholic priests. Mario Miranda's early cartoons presented vignettes of Goan village life, a theme he is best known for even today.
Mario Miranda's elder son, Raul, is a hairdresser and owns a salon in New York; his younger son, Rishaad, also a cartoonist, lives in Goa, and has designed the book Legends of Goa.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2002, and Padma Shri in 1988.
