ABSTRACT
Positioning Goa as a cultural interface, this chapter analyses the cartoons and sketches of Mario de Miranda to explore the kaleidoscope of sensory stimulations that Goa accommodates. I study the cultural matrices and sub-cultural interstices that constitute its various tactile sites like ports, bazaars and streets. The kinetic world concocted by Miranda comprises of proximity and density, with massive crowds compressed into a finite space that renders Goa as an organic entity. His sense of humor permeates the mundane textures of daily life to suture the global influences that punctuate Goa with the local cultural significations that enliven it. While the space of the bazaar is infused with perceptual contradictions, the port is exemplified by the erratically navigating tourists who both imbibe from and lend to the cultural currency of the region. Miranda foregrounds the ports as tangible points of entry into Goa, brimming over with incidental strangers who suffuse the area with a vibrant heterogeneity. The artist’s works lay emphasis on figurations of crowd and community, which accrue fluidity on the streets where the mere movement of human forms, during carnivalesque processions and fiestas, construct the domain of spectacle. By analyzing Miranda’s depictions of the varied cultural hotspots of Goa, this chapter maps the histories and the contemporary contours of the local resistance to cultural homogenization as well as the acceptance of global cultural flows and sub-cultural contraflows that have marked the essence of Goa.
