( CNN ) -- Dear Joel Stein , . Where do I begin ? Normally , I write about health care , but your essay in Time , `` My Own Private India , '' caught my attention for reasons that have nothing to do with medicine . Before I read it , I barely had any idea who you were . Your name was vaguely familiar , probably from having seen you on VH1 while channel-surfing in the wee hours . I 'm not the only one who noticed . Last I checked , your essay was one of the most read and e-mailed articles at Time.com . Good work . You earned your paycheck . But you did it with a xenophobic , even racist , rant against Indian Americans like me and a lot of other people I care about and deeply respect . Read Joel Stein 's essay , `` My Own Private India '' Have no illusions , sir . What you wrote was not funny , insightful , smart or unique . No . Every word , phrase , sentence and paragraph you produced did nothing more than distill the ancient , proud and diverse culture of India down to nothing more than clichés and stereotypes . Calling us dot-heads and Guindians , speaking of spicy food and multilimbed gods with elephant noses -- clarification , Joel : Ganesh has the elephant nose ; Siva has the multiple arms . You did it even when you were laying on the backhanded compliments . `` We all assumed Indians were geniuses . '' Thanks for that . By the way , I am not some bitter old man trying to lecture you . You and I are contemporaries . I 'm just a year younger than you are . In reading a little bit about you , we have some things in common . I was `` dorky enough '' to have played Dungeons & Dragons growing up . Given your esteemed education at Stanford , I suspect both of us excelled academically . But it 's clear that our consciences have been on divergent paths . I try to do just a little bit of good in the world by practicing medicine and writing . You took your pricey education and became ... a humorist ... a satirist ... a pundit ? A descendant of Mark Twain , H.L Mencken or P.J . O ' Rourke you are not . In the future , please leave satire and humor to trained professionals . So ... because you were n't funny or incisive , what 's your point ? Are you trying to make Indians prove our worth to the fraternity that is America ? Is your essay part of some kind of hazing ? Put up with your callous insults , and we 'll be able to live in the frat house ? What litmus test do we all have to pass to become bona fide ? Does our God have to wear a big white beard and have only two arms ? Do we have to turn in the dots on our foreheads for a baseball cap with `` N.Y. '' stenciled on it ? Trade in our samosas and chai for potato chips and Bud Light ? Should we make our parents throw their Hindi language newsmagazine in the garbage and subscribe to Time ? If it 's about fitting in with your standards of Americana , please , allow me to prove my culture 's utility to you . Some of us have become wildly successful . We run Fortune 500 companies , have been elected to political office and have won Pulitzer prizes . Many of us work 40-plus hours a week to pay our mortgage . Some have paid their dues serving this country in war . Still others struggle to pay the bills , keep their children fed or their marriages together ; and yes , there are those of us who are criminals locked up in jail . In other words , we 're just like everyone else . It 's obvious that you were waxing nostalgic about your hometown . If I follow your logic here , should nothing ever change in America ? Should moms stay at home while we men wear our suits and ties and head off to work , cigarette in hand ? Should African-Americans still drink from a different water fountain from you ? Should we revoke the right of women to vote ? If that 's the case , I 've got a Delorean with a flux capacitor I 'd be happy to sell you to get `` Back to the Future . '' I also read the apology you pinned to the bottom of the online version of your essay . `` I truly feel stomach-sick that I hurt so many people . I was trying to explain how , as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular , I was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town when I went to visit it . If we could understand that reaction , we 'd be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue , '' you wrote . `` Tiny bit uncomfortable , '' indeed . You should have stopped with `` I 'm sorry '' or just retracted the whole article . Stop trying to save face by trying to rationalize what you wrote or pin it to the immigration issue . Finally , I do want to thank you for harshly reminding of one thing : Because the essay was published just before the Fourth of July -- and incidentally , just a few weeks before India 's own independence day -- you and your publication reminded me with no uncertainty that racism , ignorance and fear of new people are as American as apple pie and Time magazine . Like you said , the Statue of Liberty should shed a tear . And Mahatma Gandhi just did . ( Time Warner Inc. is the parent company of CNN.com and Time magazine . ) The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rahul Parikh .
Parikh takes issue with Joel Stein 's column about African-Americans in his hometown . Parikh was meant to be satire , but Rahul Parikh found it a xenophobic , racist rant . Parikh says writer distilled ancient and diverse culture into clichés and stereotypes . Says the piece reminded him ignorance about and fear of new people still exist in India .