 Hi there, my name is Manona Wally, I'm a writer who lives on the unseeded ancestral lands of the Tongva people, now known as Santa Monica. I started out as a filmmaker and turned to writing as a way to tell stories about the immigrant experience. I came to America when I was very, very little, just four years old. My parents came here to further their education. They came from India. I was born in India. And my stories, novels and essays are about those early years of assimilation and then later reintegrating my Indian roots into my life and my stories. I'm excited to read for you today a very short excerpt from my novel called My Blue Skin Lover. It's set in Manhattan and it's a story of a young Indian American woman who takes the god Shiva as her lover. So it's a very wild ride through both the contemporary and ancient world. And I'm going to read you this excerpt from very close to the beginning of the novel. The woman goes down like a building. She's big, buxom and moaning. Oh, oh girl, she says, looking at me desperate. My arm flies out, but she is more than I can handle. Down she topples. I go down with her slow motion. She clutches her chest. I write myself and kneel down next to her. She grips my hand. Is it your heart? Oh, oh, oh, she says with pain. She's gasping short of breath. A blonde man stops dials 911. A woman is having a heart attack on the street. He barks the coordinates. 96th and Amsterdam. He has a military style crew cut and has the stocky build of a bulldog. He could easily handle her, but he keeps his distance. Others walk by, hesitate, move on. Do they think I have the situation covered? I know this woman. I have walked by her many times. She nicknamed her jangles long ago because her arms are always covered with bracelets, thick silver ornaments that run from her wrist to her bicep. She conducts business on Amsterdam Avenue, not far from our apartment. She grabs my arm even if her heart muscle is giving out. Her hand isn't. She has me like a vice and she isn't going to let go. She looks at me and I see her eyes are cloudy with pain. Then she becomes still. Her eyes open and shut in slow motion. I look around, panicked. Oh, please don't die. I think, please, please, please. I whisper. I invoke Shiva, God of life and death to come to her aid. I pray to him. I have never prayed before. I feel an expansive love for jangles as I stare into her pained face. This person I do not know except as a creature of the street. I want her to live. A crowd starts to form. Hey, someone is down over here. Someone comes close. A man with a blue baseball cap and a royal blue t-shirt. Let us get to work, he says to me. I startle at his voice. It's thick and low and musical. He tears open her clothes. Finally, we come to the brown of her chest. Smooth chocolate pudding skin, a few shades darker than my own. Mouth to mouth he whispers as if we were in a library. He takes my hand and pinches her nose with it. His hand is warm and its gentleness makes me feel courageous. I look at him and I have to look away quickly. His eyes sear me. Breathe, he says. Go, go, go. I put my lips to hers. There is a mismatch. My pencil-thin ones against her cigar-like fleshy ones. I feel the accident of our tongues touching and I recoil. I suck in and I blow out, not knowing at all what I am doing. My prayers have not stopped shouting in my head. Please, please, please. Stop, he says finally. I come up for air. He thumps on her chest. Up and down. Long black hair bounces on his shoulders. He is lithe and strong. And then it's like the lights coming back on after a blackout. The sudden surge of power after the city has gone dark. She comes back into her body, her chest heaves ever so slightly. The crowd, her rays and claps as if we are at a baseball game and the batter has hit a home run. I am overwhelmed with gratitude. The fire of life restored. So this is what it feels like to have your prayers answered. Powerful, humble, searing, freezing. Heat rushes through my body. I'm shaking. We hear the woo-woo of the ambulance coming down the avenue. I stand shaking. Can't stop shaking. The man, my teammate, takes my hands into his and holds them. Thank you, I whisper. And when I look at him, I am again struck by the odd smoothness of his skin. And I can't place what his ethnicity might be. Indian or Hispanic or maybe a Pacific Islander. He has no facial hair and no wrinkles and no sweat on his brow. He looks at me too, not like a stranger, but someone who has known me all my life. You will be alright, he says calmly, confidently, in a deep husky voice that if I weren't married, I might admit was sexy. Okay, I say believing him, but I can't stop shaking. There are probably other more qualified souls who should have breathed into jangles. And I don't know why it happened to be me. They get her big body on the stretcher. I want to reach out and touch her one more time. I feel like she has entered me secretly because of course I hold her breath in me and she holds mine. The crowd disperses and I look for the man. I want to thank him again or at least say goodbye, but I can't spot him in the crowd. And I don't see his back or his baseball cap head bobbing away down the street. He's disappeared. I feel let down. I don't want to be left alone. I want to tell him, I want him to tell me one more time that I will be okay even if it wasn't me who went down on the street. Because when he said it to me the first time, I felt well loved. Thank you so much for listening. The book is available. My blue skin lover as a e-book from the library. So I hope you enjoy the full read. Thanks very much.