MARCH 6 — It’s a month of reflection.
Whether fasting or not till dusk, Ramadan is so imbued in our multicultural land, it urges Malaysians to reflect on life, friendships, blood ties and everything in-between.
Even if you do not enter a Ramadan Bazaar or mosque, you pass them and experience them through the people you work, study or live next to.
I like that. A time set aside to contemplate.
We spend far too much time doing the other thing, to figure out the complicated.
We think to survive, we contemplate to ascend.
A large crowd fills the walkway at the Ramadan Bazaar in Putrajaya, exploring various food stalls and festive offerings, March 5, 2025. — Picture by Raymond Manuel
Which is why it is deeply personal.
To me, my city is as personal as it gets. Kuala Lumpur.
Almost everything I love is tied to it, and perhaps that love is hardly reciprocated by my city, but does she need to?
The figuring out is always practical.
Like how expensive it is to live in the capital zone. Cost of living is real and requires great attention, not the least to increase salaries closer to what respected think tanks and research institutes refer to as above a living wage. Cities cost more but that does not mean they have to be heartless.
The other is how it changes with every policy. About Bills in Parliament, the Urban Renewal Act, and longstanding developments in Kampung Baru. Both set to gentrify the city. Up is the way to take in more residents, vertical growth.
Those are nuts and bolts, figure-it-out questions. A contemplative one asks if Kuala Lumpur has a soul?
The abstract side is unexplored in shaping the city.
Reflections are emotional and often wholly impractical on the face of it. But so is inspiration.
Let’s put a reflective spin on what this column tends to ask for the city. Local council elections, transparency and process. The listener, usually the objector too, sees them as intrusive and unnecessary.
He hears that I want to upend the current machinery, punish wrongdoers and create democratic chaos.
It is not centred just on doing it better but to do it together.
It is necessary to bring the people closer to their own city, to experience ownership.
This is not to ignore realities.
Physically, a minority capitalist class owns most of the city — the rakyat laugh and lay about early in the evening in KLCC park but they do not abandon their senses.
They are aware those with more secure finances look down, literally, at them the masses from their tinted condominium towers encircling the park.
Emotional ownership is not determined by land and strata titles, parallel to the poor man fed by smell at Aesop’s fable. The people own the city, regardless of how money exchanges in limited directions only. Adding democratic ownership through a vote empowers.
If the city folks were closer to how their city is administered, far more of the city would reflect their will. It is in observing the absence of the small and seemingly obscure do lessons unfold.
For instance, KL lacks a chess plaza. An area quite central with a functional set up for many to play the game of 64 squares. Young and old, this and that, turn out and casually play if they have chess pieces. Some play, and many watch.
There can be a long drawn explanation on how the lack of higher interaction between power and people denies the organic emergence of simple engagement areas like a chess plaza.
It’s a perfect example of a democratised product. High social utility and no commercial value.
To the developer, it seems a waste of space in real estate price terms. To the passionate, connections with people that bridge divides occur far quicker with a chess timer rather than through government edicts accompanied by jingles.
Unfortunately, in KL, those who run the city are likelier to lunch with developers than have conversations with the passionate. The passionate and the powers are bishops on opposite-coloured squares, always near diagonally but never to touch.
Where to see the past judge the future
This is the city my father was born in, and my mother took buses despite being unable to read romanised signs. They say ashes interred go to the Universe eventually but I know my parent’s final journeys started in my city’s rivers.
I have walked these streets so many times for so many years through so many regrets that every other street speaks to me.
I welcome my countrymen to do their own contemplation this month.
For me, I’ll share about this new spot. I like it for its accessibility. On the platform of LRT Pasar Seni. Facing the track heading to Putra Heights where the front of the train halts.
Between train arrivals, there is this majestic view of Warisan 118. This beast of a building is yet to open, the second tallest concrete construct in the world. That’s the future.
Look sideways, and almost unrecognisable is the Petronas Twin Towers, looking like one building. One tower completely blocks the view of its twin. Looking at the recent past slipping into history. To complete the scene is the Exchange 106.
Recent additions in a city 150 years old competing for relevance.
But just beneath Warisan is a pristine view of Chin Woo Stadium. The athletes and swimmers there must constantly feel the new neighbour would swallow the complex whole one day.
To the unacquainted, Chin Woo was where soon to be PM Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1956 spotted the ideal spot to erect the pride of the nation, Stadium Merdeka — which ripped off the parade and shooting ground from the Victoria Institution.
Rahman sees a future from a stadium on top of the hill which appears inconsequential to the present, well at least smartphone users who look at their screens rather than the sights while standing on the platform.
That sweet spot almost makes me weep.
Tears are critical parts of contemplation.
