Published by Broadway Publishing House, the book includes nearly 200 cartoons on chapters like tourism, environment, mining, politics and wildlife. “The cartoons are mostly from my two years of work for a Goan daily which were topical so that the readers could relate to them; they revolved around Goa. I believe that cartoons are a documentary or a visual history. It’s easy to gauge the situation years ago by just looking at a cartoon of that time. I look at my cartoons as works of art and I choose my colours very carefully. Earlier, it was just two colours with a reddish brown colour and the white background, but for this book, we’ve made use of vibrant colours,” says Alexyz about his first coloured book.

The book features the works of nearly three years, bringing back memories of the affairs at that point in time. “History keeps repeating itself and so there are the same themes but with different and new perspectives. It is the same tourism, corruption and drug problems that are affecting Goa but the government will give new direction to it,” explains Alexyz, who dedicated ‘O To Be In Goa... Today’ to his dear friends, ‘Mario de Miranda, Emiliano Da Cruz and Joel D’Souza’.

Before entering into the world of cartoons, Alexyz was an athlete and played football. “I injured my knee while playing football and I had to be carried off the field. I started cartooning and my first book was ‘Sportoons’, which was India’s first book of sport toons. The book,which was released in 1982, was published by India Book House and was sold for just Rs 7.50. ‘Howzzat! - Century of Cricket Cartoons ’ was my second book of cartoons in 1987 and the first on cricket cartoons in India,” Alexyz recollects.

It is very difficult for a cartoonist to claim a piece on the daily newspaper and Alexyz was a daily cartoonist for newspapers in Mumbai such as The Indian Express, Mid-Day, Free Press Journal, Sunday Observers and Readers Digest, besides Goan dailies. “There are many cartoonists in Goa but there is hardly any space which can be daily devoted to a cartoon. Space on a newspaper is important and the cartoon should not be blocked with advertisements. I used to draw sports cartoons in Mumbai and a comic strip for Sportsweek, a weekly magazine,” says Alexyz.