R.N. Shetty: The Midnight Child Who Built Futures

The first time I noticed the name R.N. Shetty was on my way to my winter French classes at Alliance Française near Cunningham Road as a kid. To my right stood a house with the name written in perfect font — neat, serious, important. I thought it was cool that someone out there shared my last name. No relation, of course. I didn’t even know what the man looked like. To me, R.N. Shetty was just a name that looked good on a gate.

Then one summer, my dad decided we’d vacation in Murudeshwar, and we stayed at the RNS Residency, a four-star hotel overlooking the sea. I was so excited to go. I’ve always loved the water, and my mother has always been terrified of it, so I’d take any chance I got to be near it. My father had planned this whole weekend — the ferry, the temple, the sea breeze that somehow makes you feel like you’re the main character in your own movie.

Day 1 was our ferry ride. It went so fast that I couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t even want to wear the life jacket — that big, orange, heavy thing that ruined my sense of elementary fashion. My mother, meanwhile, clutched hers like she was sure she wouldn’t make it back.

I’ve been on many ferry rides since — Seattle being my favourite — but that one remains the most vivid. It was the first time I felt that kind of joy that comes from wind, water, and just enough fear to make you feel alive.

Day 2 was our visit to the Murudeshwar Temple. I remember it so clearly — unlike the temples I was used to in Udupi and Dakshina Kannada, this one was tall, massive, almost cinematic. The statue of Lord Shiva sat watching the waves, face calm, eyes half closed like he were meditating on the horizon itself.

My mother knew all the stories — not just the Hindu ones but the Greek, Roman, and Nordic too. She was an incredible storyteller. She could make you see things. She told me the story of the hare on the moon with so much life that even now, when I look up at it, I still see the hare. That evening, sitting there with her as the sky turned gold, she told me the story of Shiva — his anger, his calm, his dance, his silence.

When we went back to the hotel, I asked my father what “RNS” stood for. He said, “R.N. Shetty,” ready to give me the entire family history of who’s related to whom — a skill he inherited from my grandmother. But before he could get to it, I’d already disappeared into my own thoughts.

For a long time after that, R.N. Shetty was just a name that floated in and out of my memory — on hotel towels, on car stickers, at the gates of schools. Until one day, I realised he wasn’t just a name. He was an ecosystem — a builder of roads, bridges, faith, and futures.

Impact ≠ Fame

Since my articles on B.R. Shetty and Mulki Sunder Ram Shetty made their rounds within the Bunt community and beyond, people have written to me suggesting whom I should feature next. Let me make myself clear: these aren’t features. These are essays — researched, contextualised, and sociological. Now, I know what you’re thinking — we Bunts love our famous people. We collect them like others collect porcelain. And let’s repeat this together:

“A famous Bunt personality does not equal an impactful one.”

There are so many famous Bunt personalities. The top five most famous in the world are, ironically, the least impactful to their own community. You’d protest — “Masth maldher!” — like my grandmother. And I’m sure they have. I’m sure they have foundations that have changed lives and helped countless people. But that’s not what my study is about.

My work is about the cultural and economic impact on the Bunt community itself, and on the region of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi. Many have written to me insisting that so-and-so donated millions to the area. Monetary donations are not the same as social transformation. Still not the point.

And yes, these essays have already been written — and if I ever choose to write new ones, they’ll be researched the same way. I digress.

Yes, I can hear you muttering it under your breath like a reluctant mantra.

This essay is about Midnight’s Child.

The Midnight’s Child

A friend once asked me why I called him that. When I started researching R.N. Shetty in mid-2022, I was also reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I couldn’t finish it then (I’ll go back to it), but the idea stuck: children born at the stroke of India’s independence, each with a superpower. Now, I couldn’t finish Midnight’s Children — sorry Salman — but I got the gist. Magical babies, independence, drama. You know the vibe.

Rama Nagappa Shetty — R.N. Shetty — was born on 15 August 1928. I don’t know if it was exactly at midnight, but he was born with superpowers nonetheless. He was part of the making of independent India, and he was deeply impactful for the Bunts and the coastal belt — Murudeshwar, Kundapur, Udupi, and Dakshina Kannada.

What kind of superpowers, you ask?

The Need-Based Visionary

I never knew him personally to comment on his personality, but my research is about impact — the kind that leaves systems changed.

R.N. Shetty, like many Bunt entrepreneurs, was purpose-driven and need-based. He saw what was missing and built it. His impact on the community was felt through employment and education — two things he saw in short supply.

To understand his impact, you have to visit Murudeshwar.

When I first went there, it was still a small temple town. There was that new four-star hotel, but not much else. Today, Murudeshwar has everything a town needs — schools, colleges, hospitals, hotels, jobs, a pulse.

And to understand who enabled that transformation, you need only look at the statue of the human man who welcomes you to the temple town — the one at its very foot.

The Visit to Murudeshwar — A Sociologist’s Field Trip (with extra sunscreen)

I took two of my guests from America recently to Murudeshwar. One of them, a World Economic Forum fellow — a visionary in consulting circles — had decided to spend a week in Goa. I insisted they meet me in Murudeshwar instead. Goa had the beaches, sure, but I promised Murudeshwar had better stories.

I was visiting after almost two decades and had to pretend not to be completely awed by how much the place had changed. The once-quiet temple town now had a functioning economy of its own: hotels, hospitals, schools, restaurants, even traffic — the ultimate sign that civilisation had arrived. My guests politely nodded as I slipped into tour-guide mode, gesturing dramatically at buildings and occasionally inserting sociological commentary between bites of tender coconut.

Murudeshwar, I told them, was not a miracle of tourism; it was a case study in indigenous development. A living example of what happens when one man with vision — and an uncommon sense of purpose — builds infrastructure not for glamour, but for usefulness. I think my guests expected a quick beach break. What they got was a crash course in the Bunt work ethic, complete with temple architecture, hospitality design, and maybe too many anecdotes.

Building an Empire of Utility

R.N. Shetty began as a contractor and in 1961, founded his company that would become the RNS Group — an empire that built Karnataka’s bridges, roads, hydro projects, and hotels.

He wasn’t chasing unicorns or glamour. He built what people needed. He built the things everyone uses but no one Instagrams.

Where others sought fame, he built quietly — low-profile, deeply spiritual, unwaveringly committed. Even after he moved from Murudeshwar in 1966, he maintained strong ties — not only because of his hereditary role in the temple, but because his hometown energised him.

When he financed that towering Shiva statue, now one of Asia’s largest, it wasn’t just devotion. It was a visionary act of economic engineering. The statue drew tourism, which brought enterprise, which brought livelihoods.

Today, when you walk through Murudeshwar, you see RNS Hospitals, RNS Residency, and many more. And when you don’t see “RNS,” you might see “Naveen” — that's his son’s name.

Building the Spine of a State

If you’ve ever driven the Honnavar–Bangalore road before the late 20th century, you’ll understand why most travellers either prayed or swore before every turn. It was a road that tested engines, patience, and occasionally faith. The Western Ghats don’t make it easy — they rise like stubborn old landlords, reminding anyone who dares to build that they were here first.

Among R.N. Shetty’s earliest projects was the construction of bridges on that very road — a feat that locals still talk about with the same awe they reserve for temple miracles. He didn’t just build infrastructure; he built possibility. What was once a punishing, serpentine path became a corridor for trade, connection, and mobility.

The same pattern repeated across his career. His company, RNS Infrastructure, went on to carve 18 tunnels for the Konkan Railway, threading through terrain that most engineers called impossible. He built dams, canals, and bridges for Karnataka’s major hydroelectric and irrigation projects, and executed key works for the Karnataka State Highways Improvement Project — the literal arteries of the state’s economy.

Even today, ask anyone from the region and they’ll tell you that RNS roads don’t crumble easily. Built to last, they endure monsoons, salt winds, and the occasional lorry that thinks it’s in a rally. It’s hard to overstate the geographical challenge of the Western Ghats — unpredictable soil, aggressive rainfall, and slopes that can undo months of work overnight. And yet, R.N. Shetty’s projects stood, a blend of engineering pragmatism and sheer human will.

For Bunts, by a Bunt

His impact on the Bunt community was profound.

He was for Kannada-speaking and Kundapur Bunts what A.B. Shetty, B.R. Shetty, and Mulki Sunder Ram Shetty were for Tulu-speaking Bunts — a beacon of opportunity and a threshold of success.

Now, you have to understand something about these internal dynamics: the Kannada- and Tulu-speaking Bunts share ritual and matrilineal roots, but language often divides them. Each tends to look down on the other, though externally they stand together. We may bicker about who speaks purer Tulu, but threaten one of us and suddenly we’re a Marvel crossover event.

For Bunts from Murudeshwar, Hubli, Dharwad, and Sirsi, an RNS enterprise was a reliable employer. Many served the group for decades. Older associates told me that RNS was loyal to those loyal to him — relationships built on mutual respect and steady growth.

Contrast this with some Udupi-based enterprises, where employees often describe a more competitive environment — Bunt superiors hesitant to let fellow Bunts rise. That wasn’t the case here. People under RNS felt secure — financially, professionally, emotionally.

By the late 1990s, the RNS Group was everywhere in Karnataka.

For all the bridges and tunnels he built, R.N. Shetty’s greatest work might have been the quiet bridge between privilege and need within his own community. His support for the Bunt Sangha in Bangalore was immense. He never made a show of it. He simply appeared when the Sangha needed him and followed through.

He cared deeply about education and made sure scholarships reached students who might have otherwise stopped studying. When families struggled to arrange a wedding or faced medical expenses they could not manage, he found a way to help. The Sangha’s activities — from schools to community events — often had his quiet backing.

People who worked with him still repeat the same thing in different words: He never said no. His generosity wasn’t meant to impress. It came from a sense of duty, from the belief that success meant little if the people around you were left behind. He gave in ways that kept the community’s dignity intact.

He built reliability in a society that values memory. And memory, in return, has been kind to him.

I don’t believe in idolising humans; we’re all flawed. But what I do believe in is models of leadership — and R.N. Shetty’s model was simple: he gave back to his people, without shame, and without spectacle.

He was allergic to PR, which is precisely why his reputation survived him.

The “Uppadhra Retrograde”

When we tried to interview other famous Bunts, we noticed a pattern. Many had distanced themselves from their community once they found new social circles — film, politics, tech.

They’d return decades later, usually when something faltered. I call this “The Uppadhra Retrograde.”

Much like Mercury Retrograde, when technology malfunctions and the universe demands rest, Uppadhra Retrograde is when Bunts, unsettled in their new worlds, drift home for spiritual recalibration. Unlike Mercury though, this retrograde can’t be blamed on planetary mischief — just bad career choices and missed weddings. Also, because they were "masth busy" or "Ow pura pokkade" about things.

R.N. Shetty wasn’t like that.

His superpower wasn’t just visionary infrastructure — it was loyalty. He was an emperor without title or throne, but one who quietly kept his kingdom fed, housed, and dignified.

Faith, Infrastructure, and Solace

He didn’t just donate to the Bunt Sangha School — he ensured it had everything needed to sustain education. When the community called, he came quietly, listened, spoke little, but always followed through.

While other Bunt hoteliers built five-stars where opportunity was greatest, RNS built in temple towns — giving luxury to the devout. A peer once asked me, “Is that really impact?”

You also have to understand here — India is still therapy-averse. People find their peace and mental healing in temples like Kukke Subramanya and Kollur Mookambika. They talk to priests as if they were therapists; the symbolic rituals they perform become their exposure therapy, and they return home with the hope that they will be healed. Whether you are religious or not, or a believer or not, you have to recognise that most of the devotees who go to these temples are not your typical multi-millionaires — they are people who don’t know where else to go to find solace. It’s easy for us to sit on our high horses and say “pokkade” and roll our eyes at those who seek comfort in religion, but institutionally, religion has always provided structure — it teaches moral behaviour, preserves conscience, and offers solace in despair.

These devotees often walk, take trains, or ride buses for long, exhausting journeys to reach these places — carrying nothing but a sliver of hope that someone, even if it’s the priest or astrologer at the temple, will hear their plea. Or perhaps that the nature around these temples — the sea, the forests, the wind — will take away their pain. Creating hospitality for these travellers is not a money-making priority, but R.N. Shetty made it one.

You could call it spiritual capitalism, but I call it empathy with good housekeeping.

Creating hospitality for them wasn’t a profit move. It was compassion translated into business. RNS made that his priority.

For those returning in their Uppadhra Retrograde, RNS ensured there was always a comfortable room and a warm meal waiting — in Kukke, Murudeshwar, or wherever their spirits led in these regions of Karnataka.

R.N. Shetty built empires of ceramics, tiles, motors, and dams, but his greatest empire was philanthropy and hospitality — one that built solace itself.

The Symbolic Architect

R.N. Shetty passed in 2020, but his influence endures — in the bridges we cross, the students who learn under his scholarships, schools and colleges, and the travellers who rest in his hotels.

Through a sociological lens, he represents symbolic interactionism in motion. The things he built — roads, schools, temples, hotels — became symbols of aspiration that communities interact with daily. They aren’t just infrastructures; they’re narratives.

Through an institutional theory lens, he stands as a builder of systems — embedding morality, faith, and community care into corporate design long before CSR was coined.

He showed that impact needn’t always roar; sometimes it stands quietly by the sea, letting the waves do the talking.

R.N. Shetty’s bridges didn’t just connect places, it paved the way for new possibilities.

And like the tide that keeps returning to the shore, his legacy reminds us that what we build for others always finds its way home.

Institution, Symbol, and the Midnight’s Child

R.N. Shetty’s legacy cannot be understood solely through the lens of entrepreneurship; it must also be examined as an act of institution-building. He did not merely create companies — he built social institutions: frameworks of trust, discipline, and moral continuity. His enterprises carried an ethical spine that outlasted him, sustained by relationships, rituals, and shared values rather than mere profit.

From an institutional theory perspective, Shetty’s genius lay in understanding that sustainable organisations are not born from hierarchy but from culture. His businesses embodied the Bunt sensibility of loyalty and stewardship, translated into an industrial context. The respect he commanded within his workforce was not enforced — it was earned through predictability, fairness, and participation. He managed to create a structure that felt familial without becoming paternalistic, professional without being impersonal.

Placed in historical context, this was remarkable. India in the mid-20th century was navigating its own contradictions — between modernity and tradition, the secular and the sacred, ambition and restraint. R.N. Shetty bridged those worlds. His projects — roads, bridges, hydroelectric plants, hotels — were not rejections of the past but extensions of it, infused with the same spirit of social responsibility that governed agrarian and feudal Bunt leadership. He turned the moral economy of kinship into an industrial ethic.

And this is where the metaphor of the Midnight’s Child finds its place.

Shetty belonged to the generation that would inherit both the burdens and the dreams of a new republic. Like the children of Rushdie’s imagination, he carried the weight of a nation learning to build itself. His was a developmental imagination — he saw progress not as policy, but as practice; not as an idea, but as infrastructure.

Through a sociological lens, his legacy represents the transformation of material into meaning. In the vocabulary of symbolic interactionism, the things he built — bridges, schools, temples, hotels — became social artefacts that people continue to interact with every day. Each encounter — a student entering an RNS college, a traveller resting in one of his hotels, a devotee finding comfort in Murudeshwar — becomes an act of engagement with the symbolic world he created.

To study R.N. Shetty is to study how symbols become systems, and how intention becomes institution.

He stood at the intersection of faith and function, turning aspiration into architecture — and in doing so, he gave the Midnight’s Children their most enduring inheritance: the confidence to build a future from the ground up.

His bridges didn’t just cross rivers — they spanned memory and aspiration. And every traveller who walks over them steps into the possibility he once imagined.

Disclaimer: His impact on the economy of Murudeshwar and Karnataka was far superior to the impact on the Bunt Community. His impact on the Bunt Community is more recognised by the Bangalore and Uttara Karnataka regions.

P.S. Some of the essays may never see the light of day.

P.P.S. So many of you sent me such beautiful messages on the live chat. Thank you. More than I, my team finds so much joy reading them. We greatly appreciate your lovely words, even when we take time to respond. P.P.P.S. If you have something we may have missed, write to us here:

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