Super MARIO

The pretenders are many but Mario Miranda, who would have turned 100 today, remains Goa's best-loved chronicler and cultural commentator

- Arun Janardhan

Mapusa market, especially on Fridays, throbs with activity. It's the day when smaller businesses set up their stalls in this market in north Goa, selling trinkets, gifts and other odds and ends.

At the heart of it is the enclosed municipal market, which has its usual assortment of vegetable sellers. Above the two main entrances, facing each other, are two murals printed on tiles. Most people who use the market on a regular basis hardly notice these murals, especially since they are not at eye level.

One mural shows scenes of festivities, Hindu and Catholic, with a jazz band in between. The other is a representation of the market itself, filled with buyers and sellers of all kinds and at least one dog.

When it's a Mario, there usually is a dog. Or a crow.

Born Mario Joao Carlos do Rosario de Britto a Miranda, but known popularly only as Mario, which is how he signed his works, the artist whose creation adorns the walls of the market is also one whose work symbolises Goa in popular culture. His signature drawings are omnipresent-in bars, hotels, walls, on signs, on souvenirs, on everything that needs to validate its "Goan-ness". A sketch artist, illustrator and cartoonist, Miranda contributed to newspapers such as The Times of India in Mumbai from the 1950s till the 2000s, before he died in 2011.

His is also a style that's unique, instantly recognisable. It's often either replicated out of inspiration or just plagiarised-so when you see a Mario, you can't be sure if it's a Mario. Gerard da Cunha, who manages the Mario Gallery, which has the rights to use the artist's images commercially, calls him the most plagiarised artist around. Even the relatively new Manohar International Airport (MOPA) in north Goa, opened with much fanfare and pride a few years ago, uses on its walls the works of an artist whose style is reminiscent of Mario-but is not Mario.