Steve Braunias on the killing of Janak Patel

OPINION

The dairy is one of the great reassuring icons of New Zealand life, something we can all rely on, open every day of the week from morning to night - Janak Patel was killed on Wednesday night last week in Sandringham. A man allegedly stole a cash register from the Rose Cottage Superette. Patel followed him and was allegedly stabbed about 100m from the store. A story about the murder included this sentence, which is a bit more than allegedly heartbreaking: “After being stabbed, Patel managed to make it back to the Rose Cottage Superette and call for help, but he died.”

The dairy is where you go for milk, bread, chewing gum, beans, rice, toilet paper, washing powder, lightbulbs, catfood – you don’t generally go there for a cash register. You’re not the man charged with burglary and murder. You didn’t kill Janak Patel. When you heard about the killing, you were shocked to the core, you likely wondered just what the hell things were coming to in New Zealand, you definitely grieved for him and his family.

The dairy holds some money on the premises but not all that much. To hold it up is not a bank heist or the long, patient parting of a fool and his money. To kill its owner is death for small change, murder for something not much better than nothing - I guess it’s a profit. But then murder is rarely grand or ambitious. It’s very often petty, shabby, low. You can’t help but think that the killing of Janak Patel is a new low.

The dairy inspired a great show at the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui a few years ago. Assistant curator James Hope told Radio New Zealand the idea came to him when he was driving around one night. I love this quote, its warm glow of utter New Zealandness: “I was actually just driving past a dairy, really. It was evening and the sun was setting and this particular dairy is a wooden house and it’s got the dairy on the ground floor and the living area at the top and it had this huge yellow sign that said ‘open’ and it just seemed like a classic New Zealand scene that you drive past all the time and I was thinking about exhibitions and it just jumped out at me.”

The dairy has moved on from the warm glow of utter New Zealandness. It lost its innocence a long time ago. Owners work 90-100 hours a week, they put in all those hours and service, of course they were essential workers during the lockdowns - and the burden they carry, the risks they take for selling milk, bread, chewing gum, beans, rice, toilet paper, washing powder, lightbulbs, catfood, are thefts, bashings, stabbings, holds-ups, ramraids, and now this.

The dairy was first introduced throughout New Zealand around 1900. There was a documentary a few years ago which traced their history and how it was that Indians played such a major role. There was an interview with Jacqueline Leckie, an adjunct research fellow with the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. She said, “Indians, mainly the Gujaratis, began to sell fruit and vegetables. They would go hawking door to door, from that they started to lease little shops.” A 1994 study found that 227 of the 269 dairies in central and suburban Auckland were owned by Indians. All the corner dairies, the generations of Gujaratis, making such a vast and happy contribution to the New Zealand way of life. And now the New Zealand way of death.

The dairy is the backdrop to one of the most popular and enduring plays ever staged in New Zealand - Krishnan’s Dairy. “Take a look behind the counter of the corner dairy and discover a love story as wondrous as the Taj Mahal,” to quote theatre company Indian Ink. “A ground-breaking work: it changes the way you see the world”, to quote the Listener. “A piece of absolute enchantment”, to quote another review, in Scotland, where Krishnan’s Dairy won an award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was first staged by writer Jacob Rajan and director Justin Lewis in 1997. Wondrous, enchanting…To quote Rajan, “It was a simpler time.”

The dairy as an icon, an emblem – it’s a place of work with a counter and narrow aisles and burning incense. At the funeral service for Janak Patel, master of ceremonies Mitesh Dhanji described him as “a happy soul”. Around 350 people attended the Hindu ceremony. Patel was 34. He was married to Vijeta Patel. “It was their dream,” said Dhanji, “to run their own business.”