India, Feb. 18 -- As Darshan Restaurant on Prabhat Road completes 50 years this month, the milestone will be marked by the return of men who once worked there in the mid-1970s as 'bandhus', earning a meagre Rs.100 per month for three hours of daily work. Five decades later, many of them are engineers, administrators and professionals who say that the experience has left an indelible mark on their values and lives.

Founded in 1976, Darshan Restaurant started out as a humble juice centre. At a time when Pune's eating-out culture was limited, the restaurant followed a simple but unusual approach: clean food, fixed prices and respectful treatment of staff. College students were hired on a part-time basis and purposely referred to as 'bandhus...