Listening to Mr. Eddin Khoo is a privilege that I do not take lightly, and have had the honour to listen in to his talks in KL for the past couple of years which are masterclasses on culture, history, memory and the politics threading them all in common. He speaks with an imaginative spirit that nourishes my intellectual soul as a writer on the Indian Ocean Tarikh. This particular talk at Bursa Malaysia in their Merdeka series, was on the cultural history and memory of Kuala Lumpur, a favourite of mine because of its wild character, in the words of Mr. Eddin Khoo. The urban real estate politics of Kampung Baru in KL was an eye opener.

Kuala Lumpur is geologically wobbly, but culturally a creole space which truly makes it a melting pot of the Global South. Singapore is the pristine global city, but Kuala Lumpur is a city with a soul. An evening out in Petaling Street or Brickfields can attest to it.

History is a wound in Malaysia, and is a contested space as it should be- but there are many ways to read a place, against the grain and a counter cartography is possible. A remapping is a work in progress and I look forward to Mr. Eddin Khoo’s history of Kuala Lumpur, a personal memoir of a Bangsar Boy who grew up playing in the Pantai forests of Kuala Lumpur.