Every few days Andrew Gunn produces a satirical look at things of the State. Recently under the banner of World’s Hottest Indian Chili Powder Accidentally Finds Its Way Into Shane Jones’s Next Uber Eats Order there was this photo.
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Also in the Sunday Times this weekend there was this superb article by Perzen Patel https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360992354/nz-indians-have-been-silent-butter-chicken-row-so-im-speaking. Here’s a few lines at the end:
I want no part of the immigrant bargain. Not in my kitchen, and not in how I show up in Aotearoa.
New Zealand is no longer the Auckland I moved to in 2002. At the farmers markets, customers tell us our cashew korma paste is a staple for their curry Tuesday. The Italian selling cheese wants to taste my Indian rendition of spaghetti aglio e olio with ghee. When my kids’ friends come for a playdate, they choose my dosa over pizza.
I love the parallels between what I learned from my grandmum and what my Samoan neighbour learned from hers. I love wondering aloud with my Japanese friend why katsu curry tastes remarkably like dhansak. And I love that my colleague experimented using chai masala for a cake she baked me.
This is the New Zealand we live in. Shane Jones is the outlier here. Not us.
The racism which Jones is using to discuss a trade deal is disgusting. I have no time for racism and was reminded many times as a child by old people in the Irish community of this sort of sign outside places of employment.
Maybe somebody could remind Shane Jones of the way his Dalmatian ancestors experienced racism when they arrived here in NZ.
Where I live many of the shops, the bottle store, the dairy and my favourite coffee shop are all run by Indians. Several of our neighbours are Indian. They have enhanced our suburb, and I’m delighted to have them in our community.
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