Kuala Lumpur...The city of Transit.

In the next couple of days we saw a bit of Kuala Lumpur. It was a very different world. I remember walking on the roads and feeling different. It hit me later during one of my metro rides that the feeling was one of relief. Living in India it has become almost a second nature for me to expect people to stare at me. No, I am not the most beautiful creature that ever walked this earth. It's just that in my country, people stare. And I say people here because it is not just men, but quite literally everyone, including me. The fact that I am a young woman, I think I get stared at a little more than the rest, thanks to the male population of ours. It amazes me that with such a large citizenry, one would think that we would be tired of looking at people everywhere and just generally avoid looking at them. But nope. We stare.

So anyway, in Malaysia people don't. They simply look past you and are on their way. Please note I am not talking about the Indian population staying there. True to their roots they continue our tradition of staring at people. But the general population doesn't. I cannot tell you what a relief it is! It is a kind of freedom I was never aware that I didn't have. 

Now Kuala Lumpur in itself didn't impress me much. It's big, in parts grand, has better infrastructure and obviously less population. But it didn't really make much impact on me. Kuala Lumpur for me was a city in which people came only to go somewhere else. It was a stop over city, and it felt like one. It was nice and safe and oh so helpful, but it very clearly felt like a place that I was only stopping by, to rest for a bit, before I moved on to something more exciting and beautiful.

In fact, most people I met there felt more or less like this. It was a city some came for money, some for work and some to catch the next plane. Everyone though was clear. They didn't want to spend the rest of their lives there. Its also true that Kuala Lumpur sees migration of populous from places like Bangladesh, Pakistan & Syria. Mostly uneducated working class that lives at the edge of the upper echelons of the society. People who have their families and friends oceans apart and are forced to live in a country where they don't understand the language or the culture. Maybe it is that feeling that seeps in the corners of restaurants and subways and reach your heart. Maybe, maybe.