At the core level, Manjunath was just a young 27 year old who was killed for taking a stand against the oil mafia in a remote, nondescript place called Lakhimpur Kheri – part of the Indian hinterland where illegal gun shops abound and murders are commonplace.

However, in my experience of working with the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust and various people associated with it, at various levels, I realized one amazing phenomenon. As time passed, people who knew Manjunath personally started giving less time and people who didn’t, got more involved.

There’s a widow in Haridwar who sent her life’s savings to the Trust as donation, just after she heard Manjunath’s story somewhere.

What I realized is that people are reacting to ‘Manjunath as a concept’, and making it interact with their own experiences. It’s beyond Lakhimpur, beyond petroleum, beyond even India.

It’s more about – why can’t we live our life with pride? Why can’t things be straight? Why can’t honest, smart, hard work be rightfully rewarded? I think somewhere there is a seething frustration that has set in about this. In their life, Manjunath’s actions somewhere find that kind of connect with them. After all, all Manjunath did was not some great social service. If it was that, I don’t think so many people would have connected. No one has time for all that. Manjunath was just doing his job. He said - in my area I am supposed to check if there is adulteration or not, and if there is, to report it. In the simplest terms, that’s all he did. People’s frustration is about that. Straight line, honest hard work done with brains and with heart must be rewarded. Not killed. That’s how our script has evolved at one level. We’ve taken it much beyond oil, mafia, caste issues etc. Hence it becomes universal.

There is also another set of people. These are people who have become cynical because of the frustration. The disturbing part is that a lot of these are youngsters in big cities. The short cut, immediate gratification of the senses is what they’re going after – that’s their manna from heaven. This is troubling because this is generally the age when people are fired with idealism. One of these youngsters told us, when we mentioned Manjunath, that he thought Manjunath was a foolish man, stupid enough not to see the dangers. He should have taken the 5 million bribe, made his life, and done some PR about his good efforts using the media.

This heartless, ridiculous comment made us seethe and gave us tremendous motivation for the film. Because in our view, Manjunath was as intelligent and as brave, if not more than Bhagat Singh - one of the most celebrated revolutionaries of the Indian freedom struggle. This is because, if this is the situation after his death, surely while alive, Manjunath would have been told by people that he was so foolish to take on these people, for no monetary benefit. On the other hand, Bhagat Singh, even while sacrificing his life doing what he did, had underground support, and a feeling that he was onto something noble. Such was the atmosphere of the freedom movement at that time. But none of that for Manjunath. This is a great indication of his conviction.

We’ve written the script keeping in mind the cynics – we want them to feel after viewing the film, that it’s not Manjunath who was foolish. Rather, it’s all those people, who are running around endlessly chasing false dreams and leading a purposeless existence, who are.

This then is the basic thrust and motivation for the film. The screenplay has a very modern structure, especially keeping the cynics in the young audience in mind. The idea is to make the film entertaining and palatable to them, in a grammar that they understand.

Sandeep A. Varma