A Stroll Through KL

I am almost certain that the elevator which delivers me from my 30th floor apartment of my residential complex back to the Earth’s surface would be one of the safest places to be in the event of global thermonuclear holocaust. The door’s spring open after a firm, yet warm British woman’s voice announces my ground-level arrival and one can almost see the sublimated haze that results from cracking open an airlock. A quick swallow pops my ears to the correct pressure calibration just as I am met by the aural bop playing in the elevator antechamber. The radio-over-the-announcement speaker in the space is a new adage. When the virus forced us into hermitage, our lockdown in Malaysia was announced as the Movement Control Order (or MCO, acronyms are a sort of hobby bordering on addiction here, so try to keep up). Perhaps the management felt benevolent in gracing us with this gift from above. Perhaps they thought this might distract us from their other numerous ineptitudes as a high-rise management company, little did they know the greater ineptitudes of the globe outside the complex gates would numb us to such small offences. Perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but often times the speaker in that antechamber plays an all too familiar song that relates to some thought or thematic dressing the day desires to put to me. Of course, this is only about fifty percent of the time. The radio channel the speaker is set to, appears to float between fifteen second local news updates, Qur’anic verse interpretations set to a youthful, female voice with that most curious Malay-English accent, and super hits of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Such stark contradictions are par for the course in Malaysia generally, and here in Kuala Lumpur (KL for the initiated) especially. If I was so lucky, my evening descent from the high tower would begin with a snippet of what was once referred to as modern rock. Billy Joel, Queen, Madonna, Nirvana, and in this instance, Tina Turner.

Each morning in KL begins with the songs of the cranes. Not the organic ones, but those mechanistic beasts which perch upon the numerous towers which make up the city’s skyline that has the sort of elegance and style of Boris Johnson’s hair. The twisting of cogs and popping up of modernity’s ‘development’ might show the history of this dear town. A crescent of mountains in the Northeast gives the appearance of a chalice of mud dropped to the ground, two major cracks in the discarded cup are the two mighty rivers that slop the mud back and forth as the contents, whether they were once grand or banal, spill forth into the Straits of Malacca in the Southwest. The mightiness of the two rivers, the Klang and Gombak, are only revealed during intense rainy periods where they have been a historical menace for flooding. In their present latent state, glorified streams of the most unattractive hue would be a more fitting moniker. The colonial harvesting of Malaysia was not kind to the water quality and its postcolonial industrialism did rivers all across the country no better. Centuries of waste dump, industrial, human and otherwise; it is rather remarkable that even the slightest shade of blue can be found in these murky shallows. We are on the better end of a fifteen-year, billion dollar a year project to clean them up, but with the clock ticking towards the 2025 deadline, much is left to be desired. But fear not, you need not look at this environmental failure if you do not wish to, the Ampang-Kuala Lumpur Elevated Highway, the E12, hides it from the sky’s view and a branch of the Klang Valley Integrated Transit System rides along the two rivers, post confluence so that passengers may look out either side of the speeding train, without having to look at the ecological disaster directly below it. It is a shame too, the rivers of Kuala Lumpur have been well set in concrete to the point where there is a rich potential for a very lovely river walk. Signs tell me that developments are underway, but we live in a time where contracts are only as stable as the government and well, the current ‘government’ if you shall call it that, leaves novel notions of confidence, integrity, and democracy somewhat lacking. The virus didn’t help matters. Focus on upkeep and development in KL has the attention span of an ordinary house cat, and someone has seen fit to distract it with lasers on the wall, looking to only the new and fanciest of high-rise apartments while the past is left to its own devices and decay.

I was spoiled by the layout of American cities. My attuned internal compass never allowed to stretch its legs in such minor league urban explorations. American cities were always the easiest with their grids, running north to south, east to west, usually focussed on some natural border, be that a lake, river, mountain, or ocean. Numbered and lettered streets are common and make navigation kindergarten. Continue on this road for five miles and take a left at the tall lonely cottonwood tree, if you hit the megachurch, you’ve gone too far. Europe is a bit trickier, but they can’t help but obey some sort of logic. Many of them are radial cities, emanating from some declared centre (often the local believe their centre to be that of the very universe!), spiralling out like the arrondissements of Paris. Often these centres are churches or historically significant sites. One may learn a European city by playing a game of pinball, bouncing from café to café, monument to monument, or Starbucks to Starbucks. While the systems of orientation may differ, they have an inherent logic that is easy to get a hold of for those of us in touch with the alignment of our inner ear bones. Even strange places like Barcelona, can be cartographically conquered once one learns that directions are either given towards the sea or towards the mountains. While Asia is often a whole new world, my travels through China and Korea revealed the rules they play by. Feng-shui is not just a way to maximise your inner office peace of mind, it’s a deeply cultural ordering. Literally meaning ‘water-wind’ to spare you a chapter of Chinese aesthetic philosophy, it is a need for harmonious balance. If you build a tall building on one end of town, something better match that on the far side of town. Its subtle, but once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it and it leaves a rich beauty to these cities that are otherwise choked in clouds of pollution laden air. Aside from this, I see that many Asian cities followed the American and European fad that was sweeping the world. And to call yourself a worldly city, it appears you need a clock tower, a massive Ferris wheel, and a massive phallus. At some point in time, it would appear, that major urban centres agreed that they, seemingly definitionally, needed a large, oblong, erect tower as a symbol of status. It would appear the bigger the better, and the city with the biggest phallic building, I am told, wins a most important contest. Perhaps it is a sign of our globalised world that all cities must follow these rules. After all, them’s the rules. Or so I thought. And then I found myself in Malaysia. Malaysia plays by all the rules and by none of the rules. Completely comfortable with this headache inducing dilemma where none of the puzzle pieces fit together, but somehow a piece or art is looking you back in the eye. And there are few examples of urban planning by abstract art than Malaysia’s capital city.

One does not so much navigate Kuala Lumpur but, rather, one must negotiate it. And when all else fails, a prayer here or there can’t hurt anything. Google Maps will show you clustered lobes of concrete towers tied together by what appears to be freshly boiled spaghetti. These are the roads of KL that twist and turn with less logic than the rivers that proceeded them. Existing on multiple levels of each other, diverging and converging whenever they feel like it. You may choose to turn left or to turn right, but fundamentally this is arbitrary. Yes, there is indeed more than one way to skin a cat. If you miss your exit, it was perhaps meant to be, and chances are the road will present you with another opportunity to find wherever it is you wish to go. This road here, it will take you to Singapore and Thailand and the Straits of Malacca, it can even land you across 110th St. in Manhattan. But that’s the idea behind roads isn’t? All roads do lead to Rome, eventually. There is an international cry and many a clever capitalist has found a way to monetise it: ‘build bridges, not walls’. But let us look beyond the dollars and donuts here. The point of these walls are to block paths or roads, after all, a sea to shining sea length wall is not only fantastical, but also laughably impractical. And bridges don’t just exist, they serve to have roads where they physically cannot be. Other animals leave tracks in the sand, we leave roads. Ideally, they are like all of the collective silk of all the spider’s webs, the endless wakes of whales in the ocean. They shift and change, decay and grow a new. Like all the running water on this planet they are connected. Usually when one focuses in on a segment of this grand network, the complexity is lost and unidirectional lines remain. In KL, this dynamism lives. The contradictions are rather startling, but I suppose if one proceeds forward with the grace of God Malaysian pedestrians presuppose, or even the direct forwardness of a Londoner’s trot for which they know they are entitled to, that it is best to dive in. No need to waste time dipping a toe in to taste it. For you will never ‘get used to it.’

The inherent contradictions of KL’s roads are a match made in hell for the vehicular commuter. Insanity is the word that first and bests comes to mind when I watch the driving patterns of Malaysia. Like sharks in the ocean, motion is the difference between life and death. Best get dying or best get cracking. Through my Western eyes it is aggression. But aggressive drivers are not what Malaysian drivers are. Aggressive perhaps in the way that a cobra or a feline postures before a strike. Though it presents with the spookiness of offense, it almost always is strictly defence. When a girl stands her ground against the Swedish parliament or the Bull of Wall Street, it is adorable or inspiring (depending on which side of those conflicts you find yourself on), but when an apex predator is dethroned before an encounter with the truly most dangerous game, it’s scary or, heaven forbid, evil. For that creature recoils to fight back, driven by fear, which lies at the heart of aggression. But ‘fear is the mind-killer!’ and it is not what propels a Malaysian driver. It is instead the black sheep of the emotional family - respect. A fundamentalist follower of respect. Respect for time, space, speed, and the forward motion a road demands. Pedals are meant to be placed before the floor, this is in respect to time, life is for living, not joyriding. If I need to turn right in 100 metres, but the right lane is overflowing, I will get into the left lane and force my way back over almost instantaneously. This would get you a honk and a proudly displayed finger in the States, but here it is a respect for, space, fill the roads, and the forward movement of roads, for if time is to be delayed, then spare no space and let the mental math do itself. Motorbike conductors spare no space or speed, shattering the imagined lines that divide lanes. Why pick a lane when you can have it all? Yet respect of the other must be upheld. If a car wants it, it must be let in, even if it is traveling at an insufficient speed and your acceleration would leave it to the dustbin of history. Only the ever ignorance, hopelessly lost youth don’t let others in. An old timer may click his teeth at such an egregious error of driving tradition. Of course, I may add anyone who thinks that the relatively new advent of automobile driving demands a tradition, grossly undermines what tradition is all about. Yet, if I am accelerating at a rate that could reverse the monsoon winds, then you must in accordance with this seemingly whimsical law of respect, get over and let me pass. The contradictions compile, but motion and progress are life. And it all adds up to the greatest contradiction of all, that patience is no virtue on the roads when it is a necessary evolutionary step forward for anyone hoping to make a life in Kuala Lumpur. Just as the roads are as fluid as time itself, they have changed the landscape of KL in its relatively short history. 

Where the Gombak and the Klang rivers meet is where KL takes its name sake, at least this is the most popular theory. Kuala roughly translates as a meeting of two watery bodies, an estuary, a confluence, a marriage. Lumpur means mud. Feel free to run wild with the metaphors one can take from a muddy confluence. Of course, what is a theory without a few competitors. Malaysia likes its theories that make unlikely bedfellow with uncertainty. This point is made resoundingly clear when one examines the digitisation of KL’s rumour mill via WhatsApp or attempts to navigate the second city, the digital lives of Malaysians on Facebook. Another possible origin states that KL was originally named Pengkalan Lumpur, or ‘muddy landing place’ as Klang used to be known as Pengkalan Batu, ‘stone landing place’. Typical linguistic deterioration gets us to Kuala Lumpur, then to KL. A third theory holds much intrigue. A Cantonese word ‘lam-pa’ may have been a part of the settlements original name, meaning ‘flooded jungle’ or ‘decaying jungle’. After all the first major residents of the confluence were Chinese miners. But a revelation like that could have as drastic an effect as if Americans figured out how many of their city names came from first-nation languages. Shutter. Of course, be careful with your use of the word lampa as the local Hokkien language equates this slang term to bullocks. I suppose the etymological progression makes sense as I’m told the flood waters could easily get that high. Again, let all the beautiful metaphors for this city’s nomenclature sink in. 

Uncertain origins such as these make for wonderful dinner party discussion. But it takes an impressive level of acceptance to be so nonchalant with uncertainty. Even the original arrival of the nation’s predominant religion, Islam, in the archipelago is open to debate. A common theory holds that Islam travelled to Malaysia along the silk road line via India and the old Persian Empire. As if ideas can only travel by land. Another theory says one of the Prophet’s own men carried the message directly to the Archipelago, a tale that has been mythologised in a way that could rival America’s brown haired, blue-eyed Jesus riding a bald eagle with a sign of peace on his left hand and the Star-Spangled Banner in his right. Another provocative, and currently quite popular theory, holds that Islam ironically came as a gift from none other than China. Some of the oldest Islamic recordings date back to the state of Terengganu where its earliest mosques bear striking architectural similarities to those built in a China lost to history. 

At the muddy confluence, where a national capital would arise, a practical obstacle would make it the edge of civilisation. It was the furthest point up the Klang River boats could transport supplies and men. From there, they’d have to trek by foot to establish what would become highly lucrative tin mines. The point of confluence was an old Malay burial place and what a beautiful place to lay your loved ones to rest, where two rivers become one? Today, the oldest mosque in KL, Masjid Jamek, stands in its place. Built in 1909, the mosque was constructed in that all-too-Malay style which marries the height of Mughal India and Moorish Spain. An impossible meeting by way of both time and space, made wonderfully possible in the eternal KL. Chinese businessmen and Sumatrans looking for a place to make a living journeyed to the gateway into the great beyond. Of course, with opportunity comes sacrifice as malaria and all the dangers of the jungle accompanied those first settlers of KL at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The modern-day megametropolis started as a neighbourhood of miner’s homes built of wood and thatched palm (commodities found in aces in the jungle), which unfortunately made them prone to devastating fires. The backwater where disposable labourers were sent to make a living or die trying gained immense value as the tin mines began building the state of Selangor into a source of wealth for whom so ever could hold it. Chinese businessmen and gangs partnered with Malay princes and rajas to fight each other. Multicultural army against multicultural army, a purse of tin to the victor. It boggles the mind what brings people together and tears them apart. KL was captured and burned to the ground a couple of times before its strategic importance would forever alter the future of this little mining town. And who would suspect the British Empire. Seeing KL as a strategically more ideal foothold for controlling the tin industry, but also most business running through the Western part of the archipelago, it was made the seat of colonial administration in Malaya. And to minimise the fires, they order construction in brick, bricks made in what is now the modern district of Brickfields. 

As KL had been a predominantly Chinese town since its early days, the head of the Chinese community, the Kapitan Cina was one of the most powerful positions. Its early office holders both maintained good relations with neighbouring Malay community leaders and seized the economic opportunities by monopolising the tin mining industry and leading the way as the rubber industry rose to prominence along with the latest technological advancement of the automobile. It also didn’t hurt the coffers to hold the keys to the opium, prostitution, and gambling industries either. No doubt, corruption and greed were a part of KL since the days of mud. But despite the controversy behind the early leaders of KL, if it were not for the Kapitans, KL would have gone the way of the wood and atap houses. But then the railroad came to town and off it stepped the British. The British found the Kapitans a great tool, as long as they were useful, and once they weren’t, well the British Empire did not become one on which the sun never sets by hanging onto tools it deemed useless. And British Malaya was spared no expense from the full onslaught of colonial tactics. Institutions that both elevated and entrapped sprung up throughout the land. And the divide and conquer methods made famous in British India, rippling into contemporary events of xenophobia, were no stranger to Malaya. While precolonial Malaya was not without its tensions between people, there is little argument that the frying pan was not exchanged for the fire when the British came to town. Greater importations of Chinese and Indians from other branches of the Empire came to KL and not only through ghettoization, but also a strange career/class based social categorisation kept divisions intact without the potential for boil over should one catch wind of such notions as a diverse and plural society. It should also be noted that when the British took a quick recess from Malaya rule, the Japanese did not help the rising racial tensions in the country, especially as they could pit some of these races against their mortal enemy the Chinese. By the end of Britain’s long summer holiday in Malaya, all their divisions remained, a loose collection of only some of what was the ancient Malay world was given its independence and a ‘best wishes’ from the former colonial administration. Sultan’s came together cautiously with deep historical memories of wrongs and debts, Singapore and Borneo hung by a thread and the jungles were not just filled with zoological monsters and hantus (the Malay jungle spirits) but this new spectre known as the Communists, and of course they looked strangely familiar to the Chinese. The Malays got political power; the Chinese found themselves holding the purse. And the monsoon winds showed no signs of slowing. It was time to come together. 

My residential complex spits me out on the historic Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz. My weekly shopping-for-essentials destination is KL City Centre (KLCC). Geologically, it is straight ahead approximately three kilometres. But to go straight ahead would be to dive into the labyrinthine Kampung Baru (Kampung being the village and Baru the Malay word for new), a take on traditional Malay village, right in the heart of the towering capital city. So, I am left with left or right. The left is quicker, but more treacherous. The Jalan itself bares more in common with its river ancestors, changing on a whim, and indeed, everyday it is a new road as they work tirelessly to build an MRT station that runs beneath it. Signs will line my journey depicting a shame filled man, his head down as he pleads to embrace the discomfort now so that the future may be prosperous. Ah yes, the wonderful lie of progress. If we keep building, then everything will work itself out. We don’t think about what we are building or how it will change things, what history may be lost. We just carry on, head down. This has driven Malaysia since the late 1970s. And indeed, Malaysia has almost every year appeared to become a new land, KL itself changing drastically through the years. But we beg, has it gotten better. At times, it appears my intended simple journeys to the grocery store have me walking the perilous and ever-changing path laid out by Hades for Orpheus. 

So, to the right I journey. Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz from the look is rather unassuming. The North side of the street is a collection of residential complexes and various elements of what I’ll call a medical city block. Hospitals, research centres, clinics, even teaching and training facilities. If I look towards where the sun will inevitably set, I see a series of towers from this vantage point, but one in particular sticks out to me. It doesn’t even need to be the coolest or tallest building to command my respects. It has an overt brutalist influence, matching a certain speckling of other towers, Menaras in Malay, built in the 1980s. Each bearing the oppressive base of concrete, but with some arching, a certain Malayness is conveyed and healthy use of sweeping glass windows give the error of something wanting to look to the future, but not in a creative way. Whenever this tower catches my eye on a commute, I cannot help but hear Howard Shore’s beautiful compositional theme for Sauron and the forces of evil used throughout Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Marching drums and bass-filled brass accompany the letters U, M, N, and O which perch high atop the tower like Sauron’s all-seeing eye. Long banners of the Malaysian flag are liberally strung about the tower. I am told that during an election, the whole tower is made into a lightboard advert worthy of the famous Las Vegas strip. The Tower is the height of a sprawling PWTC (Putra World Trade Centre) complex which features an elegant campus with a convention centre built in the style of the Malay long house. PWTC is within walking distance to some of KL’s oldest premiere hotels and a sophisticated canopy of air-conditioned elevated walks sends pedestrians to all the wonderful places they may desire without having to face the reality of the ground level. This is the HQ for UMNO, the political party that has held onto political power in Malaysia since its independence from the British, all the way up to the historic elections of 2018. The Barard-dûr-esque tower is ironically named Menara Dato Onn. This particular Dato Onn was Dato Onn Jaafar who following the Japanese defeat in 1945, met with other Malay nationalists concerned with the Malaya’s future after the departure of the British. It all began as a movement. An organised union of Malay nationalists which took on the apt name of the United Malay Nationalist Organisation. Malays from all over British Malaya came together in a series of congresses to agitate for the creation of the Malayan Union. The new British satellite protectorate threatened the position of Malays as it was seen in the British system. The Malayan Union first gave citizenship to anyone born on the land and required equal rights for all. The threat came in that the British system had shoehorned Malays into the civil service sector which, when opened up to all would take a way one of the few methods of upward bound social movement for Malays. While most of the state power was in British hands, what little power remained would slowly be seeded from the Malays as they would be condemned to rural poverty and their culture and way of life would fade into memory if they were ruled by the others. UMNO declared itself a political party in 1946 after the third Malay congress in Johor and Dato Onn Jaafar would be the party’s first President. 

Although the young UMNO could easily have been a thorn in the side for British Administrators of the Malayan Union, the two found a common enemy in the menacing Communists during a period known as the Emergency. In 1949, the Malayan Union was swapped for the Federation of Malaya and a bit more autonomy was granted by the British. Then the idea of independence was tabled in return for British support of UMNO’s rise. Dato Onn, upset at UMNO’s refusal to allow non-Malay’s to join the party withdrew from the party. He formed a new one, the IMP (The Independence of Malaya Party), and began the cry for ‘Merdeka’, a term originally attributed to a freed slave which came to stand for freedom and independence. Dato Onn’s IMP was unable to hold wider Malay support and he even went on to try and form one more party which could not escape the eclipse of UMNO, especially after they made the critical coalition with the MCA, Malayan Chinese Association, to form the Alliance, a coalition which would rule until evolving into Barisan Nasional (BN),  (a former ruling coalition, that still exists today). Malaya would get its independence in 1957 (a little over a decade late for many). And history, by its nature, making comedies of tragedies as it does, now had Dato Onn’s name on the hallmark of the party he fought against in the end and Merdeka is one of the first of Malaysia’s gallery of public holidays.

My eyes avert from the all-seeing UMNO to see a deserted school. I adjust my facemask slightly. When will kids be allowed to again play freely about this yard? A painted mural shows a diverse collection of students, stereotypically emphasised in their Malay-ness, Chinese-ness, or Indian-ness to make the point without being offensive. The early days of an independent Malaya were not without their troubles and as with any fledgling democracy many are left to simmer under the surface. One saddest part of these troubles was the break-up of Singapore and Malaysia in 1965 another is the famous incident of 13 May 1969.

Approximately where this school house sits, once stood the special residence for the Menteri Bensar (Chief Minister) of Selangor, the state in which KL finds itself (although now it stands as a federal territory within, but outside of Selangor). The general election of 1969 came as the climax to a decade of racial tensions all across the country. The day of the election, 10 May, a rather peaceful funeral procession took place for a young boy who was shot dead by Malay police in KL. As the polls closed it was revealed that the Alliance had won less than half of the popular vote after facing tough opposition by the newly formed Chinese dominant parties: DAP (Democratic Action Party) and Gerakan (Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia). It was reported that Non-Malays gathered at the residence of Selangor’s Chief Minister asking him to resign and give the position to a Chinese. Provocative non-Malay on Malay taunting was reported all across the country. Seeing the rhetoric coming out of the election as a slight on Malayness, member of UMNO Youth planned to organise a small victory parade for the Chief Minister Harun Idris. The rally would take place on the evening of 13 May, a Tuesday, but since Sunday, Malays from all over Selangor and other neighbouring states coalesced in Kampung Baru to rally the Malay victory, despite how close it all came. In the afternoon, on their way to the rally, a band of Malay travellers ran into harassment from non-Malays in Gombak. The squabble was described as a fist fight that escalated to the point of casting empty glass bottles and stones back and forth. With a half an hour to go before the procession would begin, word of the scuffle reached what is now Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz. 

As you walk along the Jalan, another major Jalan, intersects, forming the Northwest corner of Kampung Baru. Today this seemingly innocuous street houses a regular evening jam as hungry mouths look to eat at the finest eateries in KL. In 1969, this road was the thin red line dividing the Malay Kampung Baru from the Chinese Chow Kit. It was the embodiment of the racial divide. Enraged by the news from Gombak, many of the Malay masses gathered at the Chief Minister’s residence broke off, seeking revenge on the unsuspecting Chow Kit area. It would later be found that Malays from out of town came not just with political spirit but also parangs and kris (traditional Malay bladed weapons). Like the fires that used to burn down the wooden city in its precolonial days, hate and riots spread throughout Chow Kit and quickly over took the city as Malay and Chinese struck back and forth. Cars and shops were burned, looting ran rampant and just as the scheduled victory procession would have begun eight Chinese were dead. In less than an hour, the whole city had fallen into madness. Mobs and gangs ran riot, cinemas were burned, a police station was besieged and an attempt was made to burn down the UMNO headquarters of the day. A curfew was instated, but poorly announced. The Inspector General of the Police gave a shoot-to-kill order for violators. By five AM the next morning, eighty people were dead. The number of Malay dead was equal to the number of dead Chinese. Before the sun would rise, police and military munitions would tip the death toll on the Chinese side significantly. As the roads sprout from KL, so too did the violence and chaos. Indian Malaysians would also find themselves entrapped within the race war. Parliament was suspended for over a year as the NOP (National Operations Council) took the reign of the country to reinstate law and order. The Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak would direct the NOP until he was made the next Prime Minister following the resolution of the state of emergency. The NOP’s final report named ‘racial politics’ as the primary reason for this tragedy. 

The thin red line between Kampung Baru and Chow Kit is now called Jalan Raja Abdullah. It is a nicely kept road, yet the sidewalks are both slanted and elevated to a comical proportion. This mixed with the segmenting and random fencing that makes walking the relatively straight road a weird play on Tetris for the pedestrian. It is no wonder most elect to simply walk along the road’s edge joining the anxiety inducing egalitarian ecosystem that exists here between humans, motorbikes, cars, buses, and stray cats and rats. There are no trees on this road and thus the sun is allowed to shine upon it unadulterated. Every inch of the road side is developed a few roads lead you into Kampung Baru, while every block is an eatery, but this order has been disrupted as seemingly random high-rise towers have found their way into Kampung Baru and Chow Kit equally, like weeds left to overtake the garden. Maybe these colossi can provide the shade desperately desired on this street. Shrieking car horns, and less than distant ambulance sirens wail to fill the atmospheric sounds occasionally silence before the commanding calls to prayer radiating from the ornamental Kampung Baru mosque. The gutters are deep not just for the high volumes of rain water accumulated in this part of the world, but to swallow up bad memories. How should anyone remember what happened here only fifty years ago. But what greater reminder is there than the toxic racial tensions that have grown deep roots in this society. You don’t notice it unless you look below the veneer of warm empathy and adherent hospitality that constitutes the cultural normal of Malaysian society. A normal I hope does not fall victim to the post-Covid desired new normal.  A normal we could all benefit from aspiring to. It is a light in which one could not think to find racism or hate, but who ever said hate was weak and lacking of cunning as an adversary. And these sorts of contradictions are ontological to Malaysia. The ultimate lesson is that utopia is a fantasy. The good doctors on the far side of this street will tell you, a disease is never cured. To properly cure a disease would be to render the organic inorganic. It is the nature of biological process that nothing is really gone, a fragment must always exist, if only to remind of what came before. 

How might we enculturate such transcendence? A bridge could do it. I find that I have slid off Jalan Raja Abdullah into the southwest corner of Kampung Baru. Whispers tell of this place or that having the greatest nasi lemak in Malaysia with the frequency of pizza joint’s in New York City claiming to have the world’s finest slice. Except here, the whispers may speak to truths. It is in these tasty dishes that true Malay traditional culture has a good chance of living on. My vision is obscured by a massive towering apartment complex, what truly is the textbook antithesis of kampung. Although it is interesting how Malay families can make high-rise flats into rather convincing faux kampung. It’s enough to break your heart if it wasn’t already broken by the systematic dismantling of Kampung Baru that has been occurring in waves over the last two decades and with such patience that one day you wake up and its gone and you have no idea how it all happened without greater awareness. Yet beyond the abomination of a monolith to modernity, climbs a bridge that reaches over the interstate that constitutes Kampung Baru’s southern border. The actual border is the Klang River which I assure myself does still exist below the elevated motorway. While the apartment complex is most certainly awkward and ill fit for the two or three story kampung bungalows that typically constitute the neighbourhood, it is not necessarily beyond one’s imagination to find, they have become a stable of Malaysian architecture and not without being to the dismay of many. But as I steer around the dark tower, in pursuit of the bridge, which in its majesty seems more fit for the uber-modern architectural anomalies appearing, say, in Singapore or Hong Kong. More out of place is the sudden park I find myself in at the northern leg of the bridge. It is one of those artificially green and groomed patches. It is a locale more fit for a north London suburb, those green breaks from the monotony of terraced houses. Technically they are natural and one could argue of nature, but every inch of them is a planned imitation. Benches are a staple along with some contraption for children to climb upon and perhaps some modern art and a tree here or there to keep up the illusion. I feel like I have fallen off the face of Malaya into a René Magritte painting.

Pinching myself to prove I am awake I proceed past an escalator entrance that seems as though it just materialised from below the ground (it was one of the ways into or out of the subterranean Kampung Baru LRT (Light Rail Train) Station, towards a massive cement square pillar. Within the pillar rises and falls a lift, around the tower’s circumference wraps a tiered stairway, presumably to heaven. Electing exercise, I climb the steeper-than-they-look stairs, and began to sweat. It starts to rain; or rather, in KL it always pours, in spontaneous and overly dramatic fashion. As I reach the top of the pillar, I cannot tell rain from sweat but I’m not bothered because even the few prepared umbrella wielders were no match for this torrent of water. At the top of the pillar a thin ledge provides about the width of an average Malay body’s worth of protection from the constant rain. Not surprisingly, the ledge is filled with those hoping for a reprieve from this uninvited downpour. And I must say I am impressed by the effort to socially distance that is at least being attempted. I, along with the others unable to find a place decide to make a bad dash for the bridge, it is hard to tell how porous the roof is in its design, but it is at least some cover. A few brave souls run out on a platform that allows for a nice picturesque background of the Bridge and the commanding twin Petronas (Twin) Towers that demands a quick selfie. 

The Bridge is called the Saloma Link. Its purpose is to get folks from Kampung Baru to KLCC and at first glance you may be tempted to think it represents the bridge all civilisations must cross from tradition to progress into modernity (what some confuse for ‘the future’). And maybe this is wishful thinking, but I like to think that maybe there is a devilishly wonderful subversion at play here. Yes, on the south side of the Klang River, or the E12, stands the stereotypical vision of the megacity. From New York to Shanghai. Skyscrapers and busy streets. Lights to keep such cities from ever sleeping. It looks like money is made here. It looks like this is the life we all desire. But that’s the adverts talking. Every day the cranes make it look like more towers are built. Construction never ends, yet over sixty percent of these spaces are empty. There is an addiction to development on that side of the bridge. My going theory is that the buildings are showered in external lights so you don’t have to see the lack of internal room lights as these spaces remain unoccupied. Development for development’s sake. But I prefer to see the Saloma Link as something a bit cleverer than this: a testament to the one thing that may get us out of the messy present into a truly better future. Love.

The Saloma Link is named for Salmah binti Ismail, the Singaporean entertainment icon of the 1950s and 1960s, who took the stage name Saloma. Renowned for her singing career as well as her acting, she was known as the Marilyn Monroe of Asia. A trendsetter and an idol. She was also married to the famous Malaysian film maker and singer, P. Ramlee, for whom the street you fall out onto on the south side of the bridge is named after. Love’s eternal bonds, as seen on Google Maps. The link itself is quite a beautiful work of art, it almost feels a violation to walk across it. Its ornamental roof is designed in the fashion of the pointy betel nut leaf which is used for the floral arrangement called a sireh junjung that is often a centre piece for Malay weddings. Lining the pointy roof of steel bent in lovely displays of Islamic geometry are dazzling LED lights capable of making rather stunning images. Mostly they fade between sold colours, blue gives way to purple and on down the rainbow to green which is traded for gold and silver which run as weaving interlocking streams before an elegant pattern of green and gold flow in a lovely design. Occasionally, the various leaves are coloured yellow, red, and blue for the Malaysian flag. But at its high an image is projected of the Malaysian flag, appearing to wave in the wind, red and white stripes as well as a crystal-clear crescent moon holding the fourteen-point Malaysian star against a blue sea background. A convenient throughway and romantic lookout point. And it’s exactly sixty-nine metres long. Perhaps there is an architectural sweat spot to a sixty-nine metres in bridge construction to which I am unaware, but I’m hard-pressed to not believe this is yet another element of the ongoing joke this bridge wants us all to lighten up and laugh at. And dear architect, you command my respectful, immature chuckles.

In accordance with contradictions and the sentiment of the local expression ‘okay-lah’, which side is the ‘from’ and which is the ‘to’? The bridge is more attractive than either destination and you can see how it brings people together, young lovers, families, friends, staring up at the wonder of the lights, or down to the quiet sci-fi look of the E12 which never seems to be terribly occupied with traffic. Or out to the mountains beyond the looming towers that beg for your attention with their stale and stagnant lights. Even the neon red static illumination of the all-seeing UMNO in the distance has the majesty of a motel’s vacancy sign. As the rain continues to fall, the sun now beyond the horizon, for a moment I see an ideal of civilisation. Underneath the beautiful canopy of the Saloma Link children run about as if in paradise. The various groups under the long bridge all respect each other’s space and facemasks are mostly properly affixed to all our faces. Individuals strike a pose as friends move about to get the perfect angle that will give a unique snap shot of this new landmark and garner the most likes and comments once posted to Facebook and Instagram. At the midpoint of the bridge, at just the right angle, one could take a selfie that captures the puritanical light of the Petronas Towers under the arch of the bridge’s canopy as a nice background. A boy and girl stand face masked with eyes expressing joy, their arms locking their necks together, as the boy’s long arm adjusts for the perfect shot. The girl pulls down her facemask to steal a peck on the cheek. We can only hope they captured an adorable candid shot. 

It was in this spirit Saloma is so fondly remembered. One of her more famous roles was as Mastura, the surprise heroine of P. Ramlee’s Ahmad Albab (1968). Mastura is the third and youngest daughter of a wealthy man looking to see his daughter’s continued prosperity through their marriage to other wealthy numb skulls so the great wheel can keep spinning. As the black sheep of the family, Mastura is shunned and married off to a pathetic poor goatherder, played by none other than P Ramlee himself. The films twists so that Mastura’s other two sisters find themselves in seemingly happy relationships with wealthy men who lead them into a life of corruption and crime to win their ‘happiness’. In Mastura and her husband’s devotion to God and each other, they come to be the truly happy couple preaching the method to their success as the story ends with a hope for us all, a hope that cannot be found in gems and designer products. And some still claim this bridge, with its namesake, is meant to lead away from tradition towards blind progress. I think not.

The south side of the Saloma Link seems disparaging, as if sliding down the throat of a great beast. On the left, the Australian Embassy looks like a concrete Soviet inspired fortress and then the high skyscrapers, a shadowy salted Earth looking patch marks the controversial future home of Trump International Hotel, KL. For now, it is just foundational rebar and tilled Earth. Maybe this one won’t get off the ground. We’ll see, oh but wait, what is this on the right. Trees and an old gate. It appears tradition found away to cross the river. But who ever said tradition had to ever be bound by time or space? As the Indian intellectual, Ashis Nandy, has noted. Tradition must change as everything else changes. If not then you truly allow the future to leave you behind. The Jalan Ampang Muslim Cemetery looks like the central park to KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre). And there Saloma lies in eternal rest. Here grave lies between P. Ramlee’s, her beloved, and her ex-husband Aman Ramile. I wonder how Saloma would feel about her final position, but then I remember, this is KL, so how could something like this be out of place. As we say, ‘okay-lah!’

As the footpath to the Saloma Link gives way to the vast intersection of Jalan Ampang and Jalan P. Ramlee, despite one’s opinion on the structure, one cannot help but stare in awe at the Petronas Twin Towers, especially lit in their standard blinding white light. It must have been more so when the towers pierced the sky for the first time in 1997. Now the skyline around it has somewhat enveloped the structure which ruled the sky from 1998 until 2004, when Taiwan won that oh so important context with its Taipei 101 tower. But this is what comes with progress for progress’s sake. Onward and upward, never look down and certainly never look back. You wouldn’t want to learn anything along the way! The Petronas Twin Towers should be seen as a beautiful testament to modernity, influenced by tradition. The shape of the two towers is based on the Rub el Hizb the octagonal illusion produced by placing two squares upon each other so that their corners don’t overlap. A wonderful contradiction that results in a geometric beauty. At the base of the towers is one of KL’s many malls, Suria KLCC which is shaped interestingly like a water molecule, where the two outer lobes of the mall are bent slightly. That bend makes water a polar molecule and because of that little detail, life is possible. At the beginning of the MCO (Movement Control Order), my weekly trip to KLCC was surreal. It was like spelunking an ancient ruin. All the levels of the mall were black and blocked off, only the subterranean level was open where a few like me, dressed protectively in a new take on what post-apocalyptic raiders might appear like (essentially less BDSM leather attire and hockey pads, more facial coverings), scavenged the shelfs of the essential services, a grocery store, a pharmacy, and a post office. Today, the light lives again in KLCC, and the people are back in droves. I’ve never been one for anxiety, but I suppose now is as good a time as any to give into that millennial stereotype I somehow missed out on. Sure, everyone is wearing a facemask, for the government has mandated it and few of us have an extra 2,000 RM (1,000 RM if you are an MP in the ruling coalition it would appear) in our pocket to pay that fine. But only so much can be asked of a people, especially after they have been locked up at home for the last five months. Social distancing, something that was less than an idea a year ago, has gone out the window from whence it came. The government recommends at least two metre’s distance between yourself and others, for those who care to read the signs in this mall, they recommend three metres. But who carries around a ruler? Yet escalators are chalk full, children run about unmasked, and facemasks have a tendency to slip under one’s chin and seem to have trouble covering people’s noses (for perhaps they forget that is also an airway). Thankfully my own mask keeps my jaw from hitting the floor, I just hope that my eyes are not revealing too much of my deeper thoughts. I move quickly trying not to touch any one or be touched along the way. The booby traps Indiana Jones endured are nothing compared to navigating a mall in KL. And it seems every tower has one in its base and they are all connected. Essentially KL today is a city composed of loosely connected malls rather than districts. Once my goods are acquired, sick of people, society, and civilisation I elect to use Grab, the ride sharing service to make my way home. Thanks to what the forty-fifth President of the United States has done to that verb, I never verbalise this term. I refuse such linguistic devolution. It is always ‘I will take Grab’ or ‘I shall use the ride sharing service known as Grab’, and I’ll attempt to end any traditions of ‘Grabbing my way across town’. As I crawl into the back seat of my designated vehicle, remembering I am in KL, the quickest way home is to begin by driving in the opposite direction. 

Now that construction had kicked back into over drive, with more high-rise condos needing building, the heavy-duty vehicles work overtime and in so doing decimate the roads around KLCC. My ride home is not smooth. If I wanted that I’d be better off riding in an all-terrain steel trap through an uncharted jungle or in a military vehicle through a war-torn city. Things only somewhat stabilise once we turn onto the road that leads to home. Jalan Tun Razak. I have often quipped that it is the worst road in KL and I have not received much resistance to such a truth claim. In the GPS’s effort, which is worthy of a few extra RM tip, to get me home as quick as possible, we have zigzagged to the Southern end of town. The environment is an elephant’s graveyard of scaffolding and orange barricades. The only thing more common than Malaysian flags in this moment might be the black scrip on orange AWAS signs (the Malay equivalent of Caution). Howard Shore’s orchestra erupts back to its Lord of the Ring’s themes as we pass the navy blue, glassy exterior square tower, crowned with a metallic songkok to give it that, not-quite-enough extra few metres on the top. The Exchange 106 stands like Isengard on a ringed plane of cultivated land, every tree in sight struck down, presumably by orcs, to feed the ever-hungry machine. It is the glory of the TRX (Tun Razak Exchange) what was poised to be the next global financial centre to rival Wall Street, Canary Wharf, or Lujiazui. It is often mistaken as the tallest building in KL, but actually it sits below the Twin Towers and both will be surpassed within a year or two, the way the crane flies, by the blue bent straw of a building rising up which is currently known as PNB 118, but will reign supreme in South East Asia as the Warisan Merdeka Tower. The Exchange 106 is the only completed part of the planned financial district, whose fate lies in a flood puddle of uncertainty as its prime source of income was the scandal hit 1MDB development fund. 

Across the street lies a mega scaffolding structure, looking like a prise hidden under a sheet waiting to be revealed. This is the next great mall/residence/hip socialising centre/everything you ever need in one place complex to be called Bukit Bintang City Centre (which will be inevitably referred to as BBCC, which I recommend people really take the time to annunciate so as to not send the wrong signal). The only thing that can be seen is the seemingly torn from history front gate of the former Pudu Prison. Originally built at the turn of the century by the British administration, once on the edge of the jungle, with tigers and hantus as effective guards as anyone. This prison is a famous execution site for many drug and arms traffickers and housed many a Malaysian being held under the imperial vestigial law known as the ISA (Internal Security Act), a piece of anti-sedition legislation to help you imprison enemies you didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of giving due process to. In 2009, the now abandoned prison was destined for demolition. Many consider this an act of historical erasure. To that, then Deputy Minister of Finance Awang Adek Hussain (an UMNO man), responded that in his opinion, this piece was not something for Malaysian’s to be proud of. So why not just be done with it? By 2012, only the main gate remained standing proudly at the edge of Jalan Tun Razak. But fear not, shame is not so easily buried in muddy slop. Soon it will stand alive again as the gate to a new prison. The prison of the colonised mind and the colonised future!

As the car rides on, residual rain drops dangling from the window, my eyes rest upwards, looking at the lights and the city now transformed into something indistinguishable from any other night time metropolis. I think of the holidays to come. I am not the first to say Malaysia has too many holidays. It apparently needs two separate holidays to celebrate its independence. Add in all the Sultan’s birthdays and coronations, the two Eids, boom - a month of the calendar gone. But I find a great significance in Malaysia’s two holidays: 31 August’s Merdeka, the celebration of the end of British rule and 16 September’s Malaysia Day, the day Sarawak and Sabah (and Singapore, but, uh, that’s complicated) joined what we today refer to as Malay-s-i-a. The fourteen-point star on the Malaysian flag signified a unison between the fourteen states of Malaysia, which included Singapore, yet even after Singapore’s ‘expulsion’ the star remained unaltered. When in the 1970s, KL was made a federal district, the federal star again seemed appropriate. So perhaps it is fitting that fifteen days stand between the two holidays for celebrating Malaysia. 

Sitting at Merdeka Square in KL, my eyes are distracted from the beauty of the Mughal/Moorish fantasy all around to a small monument outside the Kuala Lumpur City Gallery. It is a sign that reads ‘I Love KL’ where love is replaced by a heart. This symbol is perhaps one that unifies many cities the world over, even though it is a violation of the copywrite New York City holds over the emblem (and has sought persecution to uphold). But KL’s heart is tilted to the side, in a profoundly simple solution. I watch as face masked peoples of all walks of life pose and contort themselves and their loved ones in pursuit of the perfect Kodak Moment. Apathy and despair cannot win in this world. At the entrance of KL, a sign welcomes you saying ‘City of Contrast and Diversity’ And I would be the last person to disagree with that. But perhaps I may suggest an addition: ‘… and one in which contradictions reveal that hope never dies.’

Citations

For more on the development and history of Kuala Lumpur see Ziauddin Sardar’s The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, (Reaktion Books, London, 2000), Barabara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y. Andaya’s A History of Malaysia, (Macmillan Education, London, 2017), British Pathé’s ‘Views of Kuala Lumpur’ (1920-1929) on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IY6z4OmkGw, and Andrew Ng Yew Han’s 2015 documentary Kuala Lumpur Sdn. Bhd..

On the background to UMNO and the development of contemporary Malaysia post Merdeka, see Philip Mathew’s (editor) Chronicle of Malaysia: Fifty Years of Headline News (1963-2013), (Editions Didier Millet, Kuala Lumpur, 2013), Sultan Nazrin Shah’s Striving for Inclusive Development from Pangkor to a Modern Malaysian State, (Oxford University Press, New York, 2019), For more on the May 13th Tragedy, see The National Operation Council’s The May 13 Tragedy: A Report, 9 October, 1969, (Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, 2019), Kua Kia Soong’s May 13: Declassified Documents on Malaysian Riots (SUARAM, Petaling Jaya, 2007). For more on Saloma see Adil Johan’s Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Maaly Film Music of the Independent Era, (Nus Press, Singapore, 2018), and Saidah Rastam’s Rosalie and other love songs, (SIRD, Petaling Jaya, 2014).

For more on the 1MDB Scandal, see Tom Wright and Bradley Hope’s Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (Hachette Books, New York, 2019), the reporting of the team at the Sarawak Report, www.sarawakreport.org, and the episode of Netflix’s series Dirty Money titled ‘The Man at the Top,’ season 2, episode 2, posted in 2019. For the background of Pudu Prison and development in KL, see Clara Chooi’s ‘No heritage site for Pudu jail, development will commence’ Malaysian Insider, 21 June 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20140813071649/http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/no-heritage-site-for-pudu-jail-development-will-commence, and Malayasiakini’s KiniTV report ‘Pudu prison demolition’ 20 October 2009, found on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x679XpPGrLc.