Personally, too, Gopinath has come a long way. As a child, he walked barefoot to the local village school along with his siblings. The man now jets across the country, pursuing his new dreams. As a testimony to the fact that Gopinath is not poorer after Air Deccan, he and Mallya will be neighbours in the plush Lavelle Road neighbourhood in Bangalore by year-end, his colonial bungalow divided from Mallya’s by a common wall.

Captain Gopi, as he is known, unleashed the idea of flying on a whole new India.  When the Mallya-Goyal alliance was being worked out in Mumbai, Gopinath was working on a business deal in the Andamans for his budget resort company. On his way back, the low-cost Kingfisher Red (formerly Air Deccan) flight was full of villagers who had so messed up the aircraft toilet that Gopinath could not wait to get off the flight to use the restrooms. But he isn’t complaining — after all, his professed business model is altruism with self-interest so that every Indian can be transformed into a consumer and large businesses can grow.

saritha.rai@expressindia.com