Our silence on the butter chicken tsunami doesn't serve New Zealand

Butter chicken is everywhere. Inside a pie, on pizza, inside sandwiches and on nachos. It’s taking over New Zealand. At least, that’s what Shane Jones would like you to believe. But a butter chicken tsunami is not a real weather event.

Neither is the idea that immigrants are the root cause of every problem known to humankind.

Staying quiet has a cost. It dilutes us.

Everyone is talking about Shane Jones and his bad behaviour. Everyone except one lot. Us Indians.

I don’t mean our Indian politicians, journalists and associations. They’ve done their rightful duty. I’m talking about Indians like my mum. The aunties and uncles in Pakuranga. Our shop-owners, our nurses, our teachers, our chefs. Our WhatsApp groups are silent.

We’re busy looking at each other, wondering if it’s even our place to say something.

A butter chicken tsunami is not a real weather event.

This is silence that comes after years of being told you belong. But only in the way we want you to.

I’ve lived in New Zealand for 18 years. Yet, whenever the inevitable “where you’re from” question comes up, I hesitate. Am I Kiwi today or am I Indian today?

It’s a bad habit I’ve adopted from years of trying to be a ‘proper Kiwi’.

It started in my second week in New Zealand, at Macleans College. Mum had packed me rai no papeto, Parsi-style mustardy potatoes with curry leaves curled crisp on top. Blue-eyed Chris wrinkled his freckled nose. “Are you eating curry for lunch?”

Of course I brought a sandwich the next day. And for ten more years, I kept making silent choices that were bad for me. Because I wanted to be a “real Kiwi”. Well actually, I desperately wanted to be known as Perzen-the-JAFA**.

This is the silence that comes after years of being told you belong. But only in the way we want you to.

So I rolled my eyes when Mum wore her kurta with sneakers. I cringed when my parents used the free barbecues at Cockle Bay beach to cook akoori, our spicy scrambled eggs, instead of sausages. We listened when our landlord suggested we cook in the garage so the wallpaper in her mould-filled home didn’t absorb “that spicy smell.” Mum stopped cooking with coriander because “who the heck pays $4 and drives 14 km for sad, about-to-go-brown coriander?”

I must admit I even enjoyed my Friday ritual of dipping buttery naan into a bowl of radioactive orange, suspiciously sweet butter chicken from Shamiana.

On trips back to India, I ate as if I’d been starved. Squeezing in dosa, biryani, my grandmother’s curry, prawn kolivada and multiple rounds of pani puri into 17 days is no mean feat. Butter chicken never featured on my must-eat list. Except once, when I made a pilgrimage to Moti Mahal, the restaurant that invented murgh makhani in old Delhi. I ate that bowl in reverent silence, absorbing its creamy, smoky taste while ignoring the dented serving dish and faded wall décor.

And I knew I’d been right to be suspicious of the butter chicken back home in Aotearoa.

The orange Shamiana butter chicken was only sort of real. The way the Perzen who insisted she was a ‘continental chef’ was only sort of real.

Both of us fulfilling our side of the immigrant bargain. Fitting in.

I got good grades. Mum was grateful she had a job as a receptionist after receiving 63 rejection letters. I loved dancing on stage at the Auckland Diwali festival. I laughed when someone decided to call me ‘P’ because that was easier for them than saying Perzen. And Mum dutifully took endless plates of butter chicken samosas for shared lunches at work.

Our saris hung silent in the cupboards. Right beside Mum’s stash of salli – salty, crispy potato sticks. Those were for special occasions only.

Must not rock the boat. Or someone might tell us to get on the next one back home.

Then I grew up. Fell back in love with my food. Became a mum. Discovered I love wearing brightly coloured kurtas to work. Accepted that I detest cold sandwiches and salads.

But if I am a JAFA* and New Zealand is my true home then I need to start acting like family.

It’s taken me 38 years to say it out loud. 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.

But if I am a JAFA* and New Zealand is my true home, then I need to start acting like family. I must not gate-keep the real murgh makhani – or the real me – anymore.

Staying quiet has a cost. It dilutes us.

So this is me, speaking up. The immigrant bargain doesn’t serve us anymore. And it certainly doesn’t serve New Zealand.

P.S. Aunty living in Papatoetoe, kindly share this article in your WhatsApp group.

*JAFA is South Island, New Zealand speak for just another fucking Aucklander.

This article was originally published on 26 April 2026 in the Sunday Star Times.