For years now, Goa-based cartoonist Alexyz has been giving a much-appreciated boost to the HQ (humour-quotient) of Goans. At home, and now, across the globe. By sheer dint of hard work and taking part in international exhibitions and... of course, by trespassing into Cyberspace. He's one of this state's best-known and certainly best-loved cartoonist. Sad, irritating, funny, idiotic... whichever side of Goa that Alexyz touches, he manages to echo the sentiment of the commonman in the state. This Bombay-born former art teacher is one of those brave people who sought to reverse the trend of emmigration by shifting down from Bombay to Goa while still in his 'twenties.

Cartooning have taken Alexyz (a.k.a. Alex Raphael Fernandes) far. Widely travelled, he's activated funny bones in the Gulf, where he held the 'Oh! To Be In Goa' exhibition in 1989. Next year, he put up a special show exhibiting the caricatures of well-known Goans. In the mid-eighties, he almost sparked off a riot at a journalists' meeting in Lucknow, where rival factions were lobbing for their respective leaders, and Alexyz thought he could diffuse the situation... with a typical dose of Goan humour. Recently, he exhibited his cartoons in Lisbon and Evora, Portugal. If you talk to his own journalist colleagues, the stories they'd tell you about Alexyz's sense of humour could itself fill up a small book.

Alexyz is also much-travelled in another sense. He has the unique distinction of working at all the English-language dailies published from Goa, including Herald, The Navhind Times, Gomantak Times and (the now defunct) West Coast Times. He has been published in Readers' Digest, Indian Express, Illustrated Weekly, Mid-Day, Sportsweek, The Daily (Bombay), and Goa Today.

So far, he's published SPORTOONS, India's first book of sports cartoons, HOWZZAT (cricket cartoons). To be released shortly is Alexyz's book of cartoons on Goa's environment. Given his outspokenness and eagerness to support public-interest causes, Alexyz can claim a place as one of the most socially-concerned cartoonist that Goa has produced.

Alexyz, who was earlier in life a copywriter and an arts teacher at a Calangute school, has also founded CoconutBrush which is an artists' collective based in his home-village of Siolim. He loves visitors and might slip a deadline to discuss his art with you at Regina Terrace, Near SFX High School, Siolim Bardez Goa. Phone 2 7 2 7 4 8. Somewhat aptly, daughter Maymoonara has taken up to Art too, while wife Tecla teachers at SFX in Siolim.

Frederick Noronha