Manjunath who?

"... and our beloved Manjunathji we all dearly miss," concluded Amit, finally letting go of the mike.

"Who?" Machar exclaimed, billowing out his nicotine puff to brew up a mini storm. "May God bless his soul, " Srini shouted out to the audience, to be greeted by a huge, awkward silence.

A few nasty snares and a few giggles later, Amit went up to Srini to enlighten him on this person. “He's my cousin from Bengaluru and he’s alive. He had run away to Mumbai with a few of his slacker friends to start a business with aspirations to become Ambani overnight. We all expected him to come back all lost and beaten. My uncle didn't think he would go very far without a formal education. But then he eventually did not go to Mumbai. He stayed on the outskirts of the village and started a small business.

“Back in the day, he would curate meals for the TII Belgaum hostel students who were averse to eating from the mess. He would cook them all the village staples at reasonably priced rates. A couple of times, he would be thrown out of the hostel as the hostel food would get wasted, and then he would yell back, "you bloody losers. Someday I will buy this college and throw you guys out face down." When real-life investors started hosting reality shows where people could pitch them their startup ideas, he did his job on the sly. He managed to waylay one of the housekeeping boys and fed the investor his village staple. Impressed with his fearlessness more than his food, the investor willingly gave him a whopping amount, which Manju in his flow of valor promised to triple in just a year. And true to his word and beyond all reasoning of engineering or innovation, a year later he came to own a Bentley. The TII staff was sacked less harshly, with voluntary resignation, and replaced with his own lackeys. You know that glass facade first-year building, guess who built it? What not did the management do to seek some facetime with Manjunathji? But he insisted on retaining the old building. I think he said something like, being averse to destroying anything that was part of the original structure. It painfully reminded him of his old days when he was indignantly thrown out of the TII campus.”

Srini picked up a piece of picked paneer and showed it to Amit. “Manjunathji?”

“No way, his kitchen garden is way beyond our reunion budget.”

“Crony capitalist at the end of the day,” Srini shrugged.

“Not unless you opt for a free meal at the Shetty foundation. It’s open to all regardless of where you stand on the social ladder. Meals with dignity.”

Rohit, Srini, and Lambu looked at each other, recounting words from Srini’s concluding debate about innovators leading to ground-breaking discoveries. Awe and admiration intermingled in their hearts as their glasses clanked in cheers.