Continued....... Come New Year's, Shikha had not panicked nor had any reason to fear the worst. Daily emails and brief calls infused her life with an energy few could miss. She had always been the rationally calm one. Panic, however, did attack her, much to her surprise. Like a docile pet turned suddenly rabid, it wracked her mind and body when it occurred to her that she had missed her periods, more than a couple of them. Her erratic monthly cycle had never before been a source of worry until her bathroom scales and her tight lacy bras screamed for attention. By then, it had been too late. Shikha was 5 months pregnant. "Pregnancy", a malady, she hoped would go away if she ignored it long enough. Her psychological disassociation with her body grew as did her bra size. The little beer belly, which Neha called teasingly, demanded loose shirts. Her face was still the same, except for her eyes which resembled big pools of molten lava seething with inner turmoil. Her lips trembled, always on the verge of a silent sob. Shikha knew she had to deal with the situation before she divulged anything to Jeevan. Despite being a scholar of psychology, she avoided Freud except for when she taught class. His theory on psychosexual stages of development had been a grating thorn on her side when she was first introduced to him in her early twenties. In fact so riled had she been that she had submitted a meticulously written paper tearing apart the "The Oedipus Complex", "The Electra Complex", "Castration anxiety" and "Penis envy". Fresh out of Kathmandu, such theories had offended her very core. Applying Freud at the time of her psychological confusion would be chaotic, to say the least. Shikha's need for mental release ended in her discovery of J Krishnamurti:"?Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It?s man?s pretense that because he has a choice, he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment or reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence??Thought is ever limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution." Ironically, this very binding thought released her from her psychic fugue. A fugue she had grown up with and internalized throughout her adolescence. In her 7th month she finally came to terms with herself, her life and the fetus. She finally acknowledged an ownership. It was her baby. ***********to be continued*************