Hello everyone and welcome once again to Selected Shorts Too Hot for Radio, the spin-off podcast that provides you with stories too steamy, too saucy, too softcore for the public radio audience.

Yet, here some of you still are, you little minxes.

I'm your host of Parna Nancharla, and unless I change my name to Jeff Bezos to hide my assets,

I'm sticking with it.

Speaking of names, let's speak of names.

Can your name hint at your destiny?

By that, I mean, are all Karen's rule-following haters of picnics and joy?

Are all Chad's destined to be blonde, blue-eyed villains from 80s movies? Are all Adolf certain to have a terrible mustache? My name is Aparna. It's of Sanskrit origin and means leafless or not having eaten leaves.

Sure, it doesn't sound like much. Perhaps you're picturing an unapologetic carnivore.

But wait, as always, there's a religious connotation.

Aparna is another name for the Hindu goddess Parvati, who won over her soon-to-be

partner Shiva, the god of destruction, by abstaining from water and food, no, not even a single leaf,

and showing up to his cave John Cusack style with a boombox blasting a devotional song, no doubt.

Not exactly when Harry met Sally, but hey, better than

hinge, right? And so you have a partner. But does that mean I'm fated to be a perpetually

hungry girlfriend, forever appeasing a significant other whose most defining personality trait is a debt complex?

Wow, that sounds like every woman who's dated an artist.

I'd be in great company.

But I'd like to think I'm more than the origin of my given name.

But it's just harder to avoid the associations if you're named after a god.

And that's part of what today's story is about.

It was written by Carmen Maria Machado, the dark, inventive, and sensual writer behind the collection, her body and other parties, and the memoir in the Dreamhouse.

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