Are You There Krishna? It's Me, Reshma. Or Rachel. Or Whatever. (Essays on Talking to Ghosts, Accosting Celebrities, Getting High, Sexism, Race, and First-Generation Woes) is a humorous collection of stories dealing with race, sexism, culture, first generation woes, and day-to-day life. Born to a shrill hyper mother and bipolar father and living with a sister who owned a Japanese sword collection, Rachel knew even as a young child that she wasn't like the rest of her Indian family. While her parents were plotting how she could make it into med school with her mediocre grades in chemistry and biology, she had other things on her mind. She was busy fantasizing about making out with the quarterback, how she could be a cheerleader and a pageant queen yet still be so unpopular, and how she could get the family dog (a Husky-Lab mix) to get off his fat ass and take her sledding. After living with such lunacy, she knew I had to escape. She went to college, got high in Amsterdam, worked at a male modeling agency, met Gwen Stefani in a bathroom, argued with a ghost, had a one-night stand with an amnesia victim and got pulled over way too many times. Along the way, Are You There Krishna weaves observations on race, class, sex, and culture with scenes from my life from elementary school to present day. Should she be embarrassed by her period? Does she have to date Indian men? Should she wax down there? Why do people keep asking her if she was born in India? How can she straddle two cultures while still retaining my sense of self? Is she abandoning her culture by changing her name to "Rachel"? Is she a slut if she sleeps with two guys in the same day?