Mario's Microcosm: The manager and the managed

Mario João Carlos do Rosario de Britto de Miranda, known to his legion of fans simply as ‘Mario', was not just a cartoonist of genius. He was a unique chronicler of India Inc, capturing its fears, foibles and funny side through what was arguably India's first pocket cartoon focused purely on the corporate world.

In fact, when The Economic Times started an award for corporate entrepreneurs, the certificate – with a personalised sketch of the award winner by Mario – soon became a more sought after possession of India Inc's top honchos than the trophy itself.

His entry into business cartooning was accidental. For long the key illustrator of The Illustrated Weekly of India , Mario was moved to the then relatively young Economic Times when the Weekly folded.

From that accidental entry began a relationship with India's business world which was to last nearly a quarter of a century. His pocket cartoon, which appeared daily, saw the appearance of some of his most popular and enduring characters.

There was the nameless CEO, and his sexy secretary, Miss Fonseca. BC Bundaldass the politician put in frequent appearances, as did his sidekick MC Moonsamy, as well as the Boss's hapless underling, Godbole.

“Mario was on another level,” says cartoonist Ajit Ninan of The Times of India , and one of the first Indian cartoonists to do focused business-themed cartoons. “Corporate readers could readily identify with Mario's fictional office. Like Dilbert , it provided an instant template.”

But creating a template is not easy. Mario's skill lay in not just capturing the essence of office life, but in mining the unique, multi-cultural complexity of India that was represented in microcosm in any office. From the CEO to Miss Fonseca, the archetypal Goan secretary – once virtually a mandatory requirement in the secretary's ante-room of corner offices in Mumbai's real-life corporates – to the nameless manager and his fat polka-dotted sari clad wife, his characters and their travails provided his readers at every level on corporate totem pole with a recognisable handle on their own lives.

His nameless office was no real office – and at the same time, every office. “By using a fictional office, he took away the sting,” says Rajrishi Singhal, a senior bank executive, who had watched Mario at work for many years during his former role as the executive editor of The Economic Times .

It also helped that Mario was a part of the world inhabited by the top corporate executives of that era. He lived in South Mumbai, was a regular on Mumbai's cocktail party circuit, and counted many CEOs and top advertising pros among his friends.

This insight made him a virtual corporate insider, his inside jokes instantly recognisable to his audience of business leaders, his immaculate drawings and his pithy captions masking a surprisingly deep understanding of what made the world of business tick.

Even his peers admit that this was a stupendous feat. “You need to understand a range of issues to do business-oriented cartoons,” says Ninan. “From G20 to WTO to SBI's loan rate, you need to understand a range of issues.”

Mario's prodigious productivity, and his catholic eclecticism – he was just as happy to draw a few beer mats for a Mumbai pub as he was creating superbly detailed illustrations for books and magazines or his uniquely recognisable artwork for ads – perhaps masked his unique understanding of the corporate world. In his death, India Inc has lost its affectionate chronicler.

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