Nostalgia for one's hometown, reminiscences of the sylvan times of one's youth become pronounced when the neighborhood itself radically changes over the years; memory of the past conflicts with reality. Juggling the utopia of the past with angst of present America as depicted by artist Norman Rockwell is a theme which is going to resonate louder this century as minorities slowly make the majority population in the country. The popular columnist Joel Stein's satirical piece in Time magazine this past week, titled "My Own Private India," was a hark back to his past, of his youth in Edison, NJ; his troubled bewilderment to the invasion of his town by Indians since the immigration floodgates opened in 1965. That "invasion" transmogrified his beloved town into well, not even Stein seems to know quite what, except that for him there are too many Indians in Edison, some whom are "less bright" and "damn poor."

One does not really expect an erudite, sophisticated writer of Stein's caliber, a New Yorker to boot, to agonize and lament endlessly over the loss of a Pizza Hut, a cinema theater, and Italian restaurant, all of which in Edison have turned into Indian-themed places. Perhaps Stein should visit towns in California where malls, restaurants and pizza huts have closed down in the recession; suburbs have become ghost towns. Indians sadly never managed to make there in time and do a rescue act.

Never once does Stein in his piece talk of how his family has fared living in Edison over the years, if they feel the same way as him; or how his friends who never moved out from Edison feel about the "invasion." Oh yes, he does interview his classmate from high school, Jun Choi, the former mayor of Edison, who makes Stein realize and admit, as he writes in his piece, that "part of what I don't like about the new Edison is the reduction of wealth, which probably would have been worse without the arrival of so many Indians, many of whom, fittingly for a town called Edison, are inventors and engineers."

Stein has more compliments in store for the "invaders": "there is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime," (after the Indians arrived, and crime figures dropped presumably), and "all Indians are geniuses" – well, who would have guessed: "far better restaurants" – I can bet Stein is a gourmand and devourer of Indian food – and "friends dorky enough to play Dungeons & Dragons with me."

So just what is the problem with Stein's piece, apart from his illusory and surreal sense of loss and anomie? Was it perhaps him trying to get over being spurned by that Indian girl he fancied years ago, or perhaps that Indian boy from high school he never did get his hands on; or is it that he is miffed by all Indians? I would not hedge my bets. What I do realize is that Stein is a smart writer, but one who could not quite keep his perhaps subconscious feelings of disgust for Indians from surfacing even as he was trying hard to write a rational, comical piece to complement Time's cover story on Edison, the inventor.

In the recent past there have been stand-up comics like Michael Richards (Kramer in Seinfeld), who retired from stand-up comedy in 2007 after he made several racial epithets against Black people in his audience in a show in 2006; and former stand-up comedian and now Fox News anchor Glenn Beck, who for all his talk of inculcating conservative values in like-minded Republicans and bringing them together regardless of race or color, made disparaging remarks against the Indian community on his show earlier this year, which exposed his true colors. Beck later apologized for those comments. Stein belongs to the same class of wrought-up, confused comedians. Stein's black and dour humor in his column is akin to an attempt at a wide smile with clenched lips, with the additional challenge of keeping it intact for two minutes. Stein fails at that. He weaves his disgust and xenophobia repeatedly, sometimes with little dexterity, trying to dulcify it with compliments for the "genius" Indians.

This is Stein's take on the evolution of the Indians staying in Edison: "After the law passed, when I was a kid, a few engineers and doctors from Gujarat moved to Edison because of its proximity to AT&T, good schools and reasonably priced, if slightly deteriorating, post-WW II housing. For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor."

Ok, so I guess the classy Stein likes to hobnob with rich, smart Indians, maybe share a cocktail or two with them at charity benefits and such, but not the "merchant" types and, I guess even less so, the cabbies from Punjab, nurses from Kerala and waiters from Gujarat at Indian eateries, who do come usually to this country dirt poor. I don't know whether he would like to hobnob with me.

Stein also comments on the way Indian-American teens – who conflicted as they are by having the types of Stein look down upon them growing up resort to trying to ape their peers, and sometimes come worse off than before – by writing: "But if you look at the current Facebook photos of students at my old high school, J.P. Stevens, which would be very creepy of you, you'll see that, while the population seems at least half Indian, a lot of them look like the Italian Guidos I grew up with in the 1980s: gold chains, gelled hair, unbuttoned shirts. In fact, they are called Guindians. Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear."

Ok, no points for guessing what the Armani-drenched Stein is implying here: Indians smell. How many of you got that right? Well, I told you, no points for guessing. One can dismiss this mild raving and ranting of Stein's like that of a Bollywood heroine in tears for the lover she lost to the girl who comes barging in from nowhere, but what is disturbing is his callous, insensitive remarks on the racial attacks by youth called "dot busters," who hounded Indians in parts of New Jersey in the 1980s.

Stein starts off his column with this barbed attack camouflaged as satire: "I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J." In the middle of his column Stein fires a salvo which is what differentiates this column from being a clumsy one to being a deeply offensive one: "Eventually, there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture. At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians 'dot heads.' One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to 'go home to India.' In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if 'dot heads' was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose."

At perhaps the same time Stein was gleefully typing this column on his computer in an air-conditioned room spruced by air fresheners, warding off any smell that could possibly waft in from an Indian walking on the street, an Indian family was viciously attacked in Old Bridge, NJ, on June 25th.

Dr. Divyendu Sinha, a 49-year-old college professor and technology consultant, who had studied at IIT, Kharagpur – the type who Stein would call a "genius" – was beaten to death by five 17-year-olds who pounced upon Sinha and his two sons, a 10-year-old and another in high school, and Sinha's wife, as the family was taking a walk outside their house.

Mr. Stein, do you remember now more clearly that same kid from high school who drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to "go home to India." Déjà vu? Yes, but envisage also the horror and helplessness of Sinha's two boys who watched their father beaten to death in front of their own eyes, trying to help their father, pushed away mercilessly. The life-long scar that will never heal for them. Imagine, Mr. Stein, those boys reading your column now, reminiscing about your beloved state of New Jersey? Not knowing if the Sinha boys will grow up to be perhaps the "genius" Stein thought of all Indians or the "merchant" types he seems to abhor. But if tolerance is lost for cultures in America, be it Indian or Hispanic, more horrors will surely follow.

In the "dot-buster" eighties period that Stein writes about, similar cases happened. An Indian immigrant, Navroze Mody, was killed, beaten to death by bricks. Another Indian immigrant was badly beaten, a hair breadth away from losing his life.

In his later life, Rockwell began painting also the angst he saw in his time: racial discrimination that plagued the country. Whatever American utopia he had in his imagination, he lived also by the mantra of tolerance and freedom in society.

Perhaps it is time to wipe that two-minute smile with clenched lips off your face, Mr. Stein, and visit Edison more frequently so you don't find it so vastly changed the next time you do so. You can visit your family and friends more frequently. Catch a Bollywood film, visit one of the "charmless Indian strip malls" and eat at the new Indian restaurant in town. Who knows, maybe this time around, you may end up liking it.