For generations of readers, Mário João Carlos do Rosário de Brito Miranda, otherwise known as Mario de Miranda, served as the chronicler of everyday India. A visual storyteller, his repertoire of bustling streets, crowded coffee shops, office gossip and neighborhood characters transformed ordinary life into nostalgia-inducing artwork. Senior cartoonist VG Narendra, trustee of the Indian Institute of Cartoonists, remembers Miranda as one of the institute’s earliest supporters. “He was the first to encourage the idea of an institute and gallery dedicated entirely to cartoons in India. He guided me through the whole process and would visit the gallery regularly,” says Narendra who first met Miranda in his younger days in Bombay when he would visit newspaper offices while trying to establish himself as a cartoonist. In the city, the centenary is being marked with a special exhibition at the gallery, with sketches, photographs and illustrations tracing Miranda’s life and artistic journey.
