Was India hit by recession?

I have been in a continuous argument with a number of colleagues who have spent their careers in finance and its ancillaries if India was ever hit with recession? Initially,at the end of 2008 and start of 2009, all of them said yes. They argued that India is another country that is affected by recession as their business have been affected like the rest of the world with the US economy. Later by the mid year of 2009 they changed their stand and said India was not really hit by recession but an economic slowdown and there was a slow recovery that was happening for the industries.

I being a graduate in Finance did understand some basics of finance although I never had a career in finance due to my aversion to sitting in a room and working with numbers. As my professor would say, there is a story behind all the numbers. I prefer reading a story that has words in it rather than numbers. I never did understand why did people promote the assumption that India was hit by recession ever and I felt proud that unlike the so called financial gurus of our country I had the simple logic of determining that India was never hit with recession. You see for an economy to be hit with recession it has to have a pronounced deflation for a consective of two quarters. India had it for only one quarter. The deflation was for the Export Vs Import Market and not for the domestic market which has not seen a 4% inflation rate for many years now. So we were never in a red because our domestic market was always on a growth mode but yes our international markets were definitely affected for a short period of time.

The end result, India was not hit with recession! I then wonder why a number of people lost their jobs in India in the name of recession?