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S. Ramachander

In almost all organisations, regardless of ownership structure or location, there are idiosyncratic routines to ascertain the `right' way to begin things ceremoniously.

Few subjects are greeted with such a range of extreme emotions, from reverential devotion to withering contempt, as astrology. Its very claim to being referred to as anything like a respectable branch of human knowledge is often dismissed out of hand. Yet in the world of commerce, no decision of significance seems to be taken without some prior verification that the "stars are in their right aspects". In the early post-Independence years, perhaps in the afterglow of a non-violent revolution that changed the course of history, one felt with Brutus that it was "not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings". Being a professional then meant getting rid of the unquestioning beliefs one had acquired at birth, from the family and the community; we were in the quest for what the great Pandit Nehru called a modern, scientific temper.

My own first brush with anything remotely connected to the celestial forces happened with my introduction to the South Indian chief of an American company, which I joined as a young manager. It was a mere formality, to shake hands and agree on the time and date of reporting for duty. "So you're joining on the 1st, right? We start at 9.15" he said, adding, "but it's a Monday, so you'd better set off from home after 9 - rahu kalam, you know".

To all of us this might seem normal, but coming from a person who had spent all his life working with American bosses, this seemed a strange way of getting off the mark in a new job. I was till then entirely innocent of the very Indian notion of `good' and `bad' times, construed astrologically. Talk of the Lord of this house being `aspected' by the Lord of such-and-such was pure gibberish as I had never set eyes on charts with those boxes inside a square. Nevertheless, one could not help wondering whether all this propitiating the gods or stars above was only peculiar to India or in some sense universal.

As the decades rolled by, one has realised that even the rebellious and iconoclastic amongst us 30 years ago have invariably mellowed in their ways and thoughts, where tradition and custom in general are concerned. Whether we are tired of taking strong positions against the current or our resolve has been weakened by the tide of unfavourable and unexpected events, one does not know. The truth seems to be that few approach the subject purely out of curiosity. Perhaps we have each found the right rationalisation in our own ways to turn our insecurities and fears into ritualistic responses. We just hate to admit that we do not — and indeed cannot — know, as the state of `not-knowing' is so full of potential danger and present anxiety. As we move into times of greater violence and mindless criminality at all levels in business as well as government, it seems but natural that even the independent-minded turn to consulting palmists, numerologists, diviners of all kinds as well as astrologers and their birth-charts. Whether astrology `works' or beliefs such as `right time' have any proof of validity will remain contentious questions.

In almost all organisations in India, regardless of their ownership structure, lineage, location or local culture, there are idiosyncratic routines to ascertaining the right and approved way to begin things ceremoniously. Some things were common: programmes started at odd times, like 9:02 a.m., or one did not launch any new product, open a factory, office, account, or contractual venture of any reasonable scale without making sure that the gods had smiled on them, by choosing not just the right moment but the due ceremony as well. In personal life, of course, the business of pre-marital matching of horoscopes and prediction of one's life phases is a small cottage industry by itself.

The book True as the stars above (Orion, London, 2000) by Neil Spencer, a witty journalist and a regular columnist with The Observer, turned out to be a fascinating eye-opener. Spencer, personally known to me, has written an unusual book that answers the questions: what is the historical, indeed psychological and social, basis of astrology and what explains its hold over the mind of man through the millennia? When Spencer was visiting India some years ago, as I drove him down Mount Road he exclaimed in shock at the state of the driving and traffic. "Ah, don't you worry, you should make a note of this," I had told him with some irony, "This is what comes from people having an unshakeable faith in astrology. When they've got to go, they know they've got to go, sure — but not a moment before; so what seems daredevilry to you is okay for them!" This tickled him no end. His starting point is an interest in understanding how and why astrology got here, in a so-called Information Age, when all belief systems are being exploded by ever-new discoveries.

And yet, in recent times, many surveys have shown that more and more people in the West are turning to all forms of knowing, including the New Age ones. California is of course at the vanguard of everything — from palmistry to Tarot cards to crystal ball gazing to Chinese Feng-Shui as also the celebrated Oriental mystic traditions. In the UK and Europe too, there is a return to the fascination with fortune telling, and hardly any magazine or newspaper can afford to dispense with its star-sign column.

The fundamental notion that there are `correspondences' between the position of the stars above and what happens to humans on the earth below, though an ancient one, is still very much in currency, and prime ministers, movie stars and business magnates all seem to have a trusted resident soothsayer. It is not that the signs of the Zodiac divide the entire world into twelve basic personality types. On the contrary, when one takes into account the position of the planets, time of day and place, one gets a far greater variety and a finer-grained set of distinctions than is possible with any well-known modern psychometric typology. Yet we know only too well that these so-called instruments are employed quite regularly by the HR professionals to determine selection and career planning of employees. For example, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator would have us believe that there are 16 essential groupings of personality types; so too the Cattell's 16PF, which talks of key, but common, factors. If both these can be taken as reputable and fairly reliable ways of understanding preferred and likely modes of behaviour, problem solving styles and learning methods of people, then it is at least possible to argue that there could be other ways of arriving at such commonalities. The influence of the planets and their positions in relation to one another at the time of one's birth is one of them.

I do not wish to offer the foregoing as a formal defence of following any particular set of precedents and omens. Yet it does suggest, as this book does, that a scientific study of the origins of the `science' would help us in understanding the roots of such dependence on some forms of fortune-telling relying upon the heavenly bodies.

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