Comprehensive information and links about The Guru

The Guru is a 2002 comedy film written by Tracey Jackson and directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer, about a dance teacher who comes to America from India and stumbles into a brief but high-profile career as a sex guru, a career based on a philosophy he learns from a pornographic actress.

The film stars Jimi Mistri as the title character, Heather Graham as the actress he learns from, and Marisa Tomei, who helps him reach his guru status among her high society New York City friends.

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Ramu, a dance teacher from Bombay, seeks his fortune in the United States, lured by the exaggerations of his cousin, Vijay. Seeking work as an actor he auditions for a role, not realizing what kind of film it was.

That evening he accompanies Vijay and his roommates on a catering job at a society birthday party. When the Indian swami hired to address the party falls into drunken oblivion, Ramu takes his place. Lacking a real philosophy he improvises by repeating the advice he had been given by Sharonna, the actress he met on the set earlier. Lexi, the birthday girl, is so impressed that she initiates a sexual relationship with him. Convinced that he is a guru, Lexi promotes him as such to her friends. To maintain the fiction he returns to Sharonna and starts to pay her for lessons in sexual philosophy on the pretext of seeking to make it in the porno business. Sharonna is engaging in a deception of her own, telling her fire-fighter fiance, Rusty, that she works as a schoolteacher.

The guru's influence spreads—he even transforms the lives of Lexi's divided parents—and Lexi finds him a bigshot agent, who launches him with a night at the Broadway Playhouse. On the afternoon of the show, Sharonna and Ramu have an intimate conversation that ends with a kiss. They part confused. Sharonna leaves before Ramu can confess to having made her secret philosophy public.

That evening, Sharonna is dining with Rusty, his parents and their parish priest. She is recognised as a porno actress by patrons of the diner (and surreptitiously by Father Flannigan) although Rusty remains unaware of the truth of the accusations. Sharonna flees the restaurant in distress. She telephones Ramu for comfort and is told by one of his roommates that he is at the Playhouse.

She walks into the show unaware and is appalled by Ramu's betrayal of her trust. That night Ramu fantasizes about a Bollywood wedding with Sharonna that morphs into a Bollywood version of (1978), the film that inspired him as a child.

On the Sally Jessy Raphaël show on the day of Sharonna's wedding, Ramu, who has been having doubts, takes an on-screen call from Rusty in which Rusty anonymously announces that he would prefer to be marrying his fellow fireman, the second hoseman. Ramu advises him and then confesses his fraud to the audience. As he leaves the studio he tells Lexi that she is the true guru and gives her his turban. Vijay drives him to the wedding where he and the second hoseman interrupt the ceremony to declare their love. The congregation erupts into the Bollywood number and Ramu and Sharonna drive into a blissful future in his red Mercedes.