So many women - from New Delhi to New York - experience menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and menopause as problematic phases in their lives. The growing trend of C-sections is a sign that women view the very things that make them female as liabilities. Such fears are also triggered by biomedicine ignoring many amazing gifts of the human body; and western medicine not giving due credit to the powers of the female as a life-bearing body. However, recent research on performance of postpartum athletes returns to the age-old belief that pregnancy improves both physical and mental performance.

* "The name of the birth goddess Shosti Ma, still invoked by traditional midwives in Eastern India, is the same as the Hindi 'shristi' - creation. The birthing woman is akin to the cosmic creatrix - the Devi, Shakti."