I visited Mehendipur last week. Located around 100 km north of Jaipur, Mehendipur is a small kasba off the Agra-Jaipur highway. You must thank your stars if you haven’t heard of this place. Mehendipur houses a shrine that draws millions of people every year who come there to exorcise evil spirits.  

A vast number of devotees alight at the nearest bus stop (about four kilometres away from the town), fall prostrate on the ground and scrape through the dust and the tar of the lone street all the way to the shrine.

Some walk barefoot under the high desert Sun for days to make it to the shrine. To atone for my share of sins, I took a non-AC taxi from Jaipur.

Why was I found last week at such a place, that too on a holiday? I don’t believe in evil spirits. But I don’t believe in true love either, though people say it exists. And I won’t mind checking the existence of these or other paranormal activities — which is why I landed up in the mofussil town last week.

On the day of my arrival, my co-traveller who is also an old friend told me that the evening Aarti that day is the occassion when the Mahant of the temple will exorcise spirits off the troubled subjects.  

That night, my friend and I left our inn half an hour before the scheduled time and trudged our way to the shrine. Weaving through a maze of dark, narrow alleys, we reached a large field that most likely functioned as a school playground by day.

I noticed hundreds of people — men, women and children — who stood almost motionless forming a crowd that stretched accross the playground. Making our way through the sea of people, we reached a courtyard that had a small temple nestled right in the center of the enclosed space. 

A raised cement platform surrounded the main temple, and an iron fence lined the main courtyard. Between the raised platform and the iron fence, sat scores of people who were said to be possessed by the evil spirits. My friend had it all worked out. Minutes before the Aarti, he gestured to me that I must jump over the iron fence and join the “possessed” devotees on the other side, so I could “get a closer feel” of the rituals. Then, ignoring my mild protests, my childhood friend tossed me over into the welcoming bed of hands raised in the air on the other side of the spiked stucture. 

Once inside, I managed to have a look at people around me.  The entire “possessed” group of devotess consisted solely of women — mostly young girls, except perhaps for two or three women who would be in their early or mid-thirties. To my dismay, the only man I managed to spot in the assembly lay writhing on the floor right next to my left foot. The unfortunate soul had his legs tied together with an iron chain, I noticed later. 

I looked back and thought my friend flashed an evil smirk in my direction.

Shortly after, a diminutive man emerged from the temple, held up a huge brass gong in the air and started pounding it with a hammer. One by one, some of the women seated around me rose to their feet and began swaying their heads to the sounds of the chanting and the gong.  All this while, I stayed crouched on the ground.

Soon enough, the chanting, the gonging and the head-swaying reached a spine-chilling crescendo.

Meanwhile, a strange thing had happened. I was not afraid anymore.

I had begun to notice a number of similarities among the head-swayers around me.  

To begun with, not one of them was moving in a reckless fashion – each one was careful not to hurt the one moving next to her.

Not a single girl had looked ungainly all this while, even when carrying out one of the most unsightly of acts known to mankind, well, at least to me.  Each of the girls had tied her dupatta around her waist like she knew what the evening had in store for her.  And all of them had long, well-oiled hair that had been left untied — it lent a haunting aura to the whole sight.

But the most striking similarity of all had to be their physical attributes. 

All of them — young and old — were pretty. Not above-average pretty, but head-turning pretty (pun unintended).  They had sharp features, high cheekbones, well-set eyes, shapely figures – every single woman was attractive in her own way (this factor is not lost on the town folk. Local lore has it that evil spirits prefer the company of pretty girls).

Was I reading too much into this? Is there something more to this phenomenon? I have my theories and I am sure believers have their theories too. One of mine goes thus: hell is life of a girl growing up in a small Indian town.

But we will spare everyone the profundity and try and find some peace in the thought that, fortunately for some small town girls, there are places like Mehendipur where they can let go of their demons, once in a blue, full moon. 

As for me, I now want to believe in ghosts. Still not sure about true love, though.

A Business Standard editorial piece published today suggests that India’s GDP growth in the fourth quarter of FY2008 will likely be slower than the 5.3 per cent growth recorded in the preceding quarter of the fiscal.

Hang on, there is more bad news.

In his latest column published in ToI’s Sunday edition, Swaminathan S Ankelasaria Aiyar ventured a calculated guess about how long this downturn could last. He wrote:

 “We should expect slowdown to continue for several quarters…We may expect some small improvement in the last quarter of 2009, but a return to a fast growth will have to wait till late 2010, or even 2011.”

Till about a month ago, many analysts were predicting that the Indian economy will be back on track by the first or the second quarter of fiscal 2010. Aiyar says that we may have to wait till 2011.

Even now, even by the most optimistic estimates, customers will not be beating down our doors at the end of three years.

All analysts have admitted at some point or the other that all their upturn-cometh predictions are based on a number of assumptions – like the US economy will show signs of recovery within the next two quarters and India’s fiscal stimulus doses would kick in before the next quarter. Some are also factoring in the emergence of a disruptive force (like rural connectivity through 3G networks) that would do unimaginable things to Indian economy like the Internet did the last time.

Putting all estimates together, it would be safe to say that the Indian economy may see at least three years of sluggish growth before it gains tempo. And that the next two years in particular are going to be painful for everyone concerned in the corporate world.

It will be especially tough for young executives — mostly in their mid-to-late twenties — who have joined corporate workforce in large numbers during the last six to seven years. These executives will see tough and uncertain conditions at workplace perhaps for the first time in their careers.

Estimates say that the slowdown has claimed around 10 lakh jobs across industry sectors since September 2008. And the churn has just begun.

The young executives have gone through the first part of the course correction drill. Lifestyle changes have been brought about – new home and car loans have been put off or cancelled; as for the ones already taken, distress calls to parents have been made; many have applied to management colleges where they could sit out the storm while it lasts.

Those who are still around could face deeper cuts as time passes by.  With every turn of the screw, they will lose some of the baggage accumulated during happy times – best friends will get busy, long time suitors will disappear and quicksilver spouses will vanish. In short, it will not be an easy ride.

Tough as it will be, this will also serve as an introspection time for the first-generation corporate worker. When the new convert will compare his shaky corporate career with the serene vocation of those of his father’s generation – who receive regular, decent hikes in salaries and pensions regardless of the state of the economy – he will be forced to think that there is some merit after all in the largely unenterprising but secure government jobs.

Recent media reports highlight a renewed interest among youth in government vocations.

While all this plays out, some of these first-timers will stick out these tough months, some nervously toiling at one job, others moving from one job to another (if they find them, that is) and some barely scraping through with freelance work and family support. But stick around they would, learning and unlearning things in few years what they would normally take a decade to discover.

All members of this particular tribe will have one trait in common, one reckons. Somewhere down the road, these guys will figure the real reason they want to stick to their line of work for, and will then decide that this particular reason is bigger than everything else they stand to lose during this phase. The rest, as they would tell you later, was easy.

No prizes for guessing who will stand to make the most of new opportunities when the tide turns.