Three men met online on a Monday:

• Ismar, 64, in Brazil – a disillusioned idealist and former city-council candidate.
• Ritesh, 29, in India – a thoughtful young professional navigating hope and disillusion.
• And the Mayor in France, moderating the space between them.

Their topic sounded deceptively simple:

“Inspiring people – or people who inspire you… That’s the topic for today.”

The conversation that followed became a cross-continental exploration of admiration, disappointment, responsibility, corruption, and something unexpected: the meaning of a guru.

“I don’t have a model person.”

The Mayor starts with Ismar, deliberately:

“Because you have a slightly more critical view on humanity…”

Predictably, Ismar refuses the idea of heroes.

He distrusts self-help books. He insists motivation comes from within, not from personalities or slogans. He admires isolated skills—good orators, quick thinkers, people with photographic memory—but never the whole person.

“I don’t have a person who is an example for me… not in Brazil, not outside.”

It is classic Ismar: sober, realistic, and resistant to hero-worship.

Ritesh: Admiration with Conditions

Where Ismar rejects models entirely, Ritesh approaches inspiration analytically.

He admires:

• Teachers who prepared well.
• Colleagues whose behaviour matched their professionalism.
• People who connected with him naturally, without pretence.

Yet he shares a generational dilemma:

“If I look at a person who is successful, I doubt his success… I feel he must have climbed the ladder by doing something wrong.”

It isn’t cynicism for effect. It is lived experience inside a system where success often seems inseparable from compromise.

Who deserves respect?

Both men land, from opposite directions, on the same essential truth:

• Integrity matters more than status.
• Ethics outweigh wealth.
• Consistency is more admirable than charisma.

Ismar respects people who produce something, become successful by real contribution, and remain moral.

Ritesh respects people who do things right, without shortcuts, deceit, or manipulation.

This shared moral backbone becomes important later—when the idea of the guru enters the conversation.

Politics: Inspiration in a Corrupt System

Brazil: Ismar’s Ethical Experiment

Ismar chose Brazil’s NOVO party because, for him, it represented the closest thing to ethics in Brazilian politics. They disciplined members who misbehaved, even removing a local mayoral candidate for inappropriate conduct.

Still, campaigning exposed a painful truth:

• Many voters asked him for benefits in exchange for votes.
• People were tired of corruption scandals.
• And he knew he would almost certainly lose.

He ran anyway, treating the campaign as a civic act, a personal lesson, and a chance to offer voters at least one ethical option.

India: Ritesh’s Democratic Disillusion

When asked directly whether Prime Minister Modi is a role model, Ritesh is unequivocal:

“My thinking does not match with his. I don’t see him as a role model.”

He recalls being swept up in 2014’s optimism as a young student—then watching the political climate shift toward controlled media, biased electoral conditions, and pervasive vote-buying.

His portrait of Indian democracy is deeply human:

• People accept bribes because they are poor, not evil.
• Independent candidates run simply to give voters a moral choice.
• Urban populations increasingly abstain, believing their vote “will not change anything.”

Both men recognise the same pattern in their countries:
a population frustrated by corruption, yet—at times—complicit in it.

The Guru Question: Meaning, Misuse, and Irony

In the middle of intense political analysis, the Mayor turns to Ritesh with a cultural question:

“Guru is a Hindi word, yes?”

Ritesh expands the conversation beautifully.

What a guru is supposed to be

He explains that guru comes from Sanskrit:

• Gu = darkness
• Ru = the remover

So a guru is literally one who leads you from darkness into light.

Traditionally, it implies someone with:

• Deep knowledge
• Moral authority
• Wisdom about life
• The ability to guide others in conduct and understanding

In schools, the word once referred to teachers, not celebrities.

How the term is misused today

Modern India—like much of the world—has stretched, diluted or even commercialised the meaning:

• Self-proclaimed “gurus” selling shortcuts to success
• Media personalities adopting the title as branding
• Political leaders being framed as gurus to signal unquestionable loyalty

The sacred teacher has become, in many cases, a marketable identity.

Ritesh does not hide his frustration with how easily people fall into personality worship—something Ismar instinctively rejects.

Which leads to an irony…

After Ritesh explains the noble meaning of a guru, the Mayor playfully turns to Ismar:

“You don’t believe in inspirational figures… yet you yourself have become a kind of semi-guru for someone in India.”

Ismar laughs, counting his supporters outside Brazil:

• One in France
• One in India
• And maybe Monica

A tiny global following for a man who doesn’t even believe in role models.

It is a moment of gentle irony:
the man who rejects gurus becomes one because he refuses to act like one.

Can people inspire each other after all?

The Mayor had begun the discussion with a philosophical question:

“Do you actually think people can inspire each other?”

Neither Ismar nor Ritesh answered “yes.”
But by the end, the answer had revealed itself in another form.

Inspiration was not in grand gestures, fame, or titles.
It was in:

• A retired Brazilian man running an ethical campaign he knew he would lose.
• A young Indian professional refusing to give up on civic integrity.
• A French moderator creating a space where strangers become mirrors.
• A cross-continental conversation that made each man understand himself better through the other.

Their worlds—Brazil, India, France—share no borders.
Their lives have no overlap.

Yet somehow, in one hour of honesty, admiration crossed oceans.

People can inspire each other—
not through perfection, speeches, or success,
but through the courage to speak plainly about doubt, disappointment, and the decision to still try.

Even a skeptic can become a guru.
Even a disillusioned voter can become an example.
And even across continents, inspiration can travel further than any campaign ever could.