Topsy-turvy thoroughfares
7 December 2015(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 7 December 2015 issue)
Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or do the streets of KL change every single day? I get so confused in my own city. The other day, I got completely lost and even my Waze told me to pull over and ask for directions — which I refused to do because, well, I’m a man and we don’t ask for directions.
Circle Game
Not a lot of people know this but Petaling Jaya was the original inspiration for U2’s classic song, “Where the Streets Have No Name”. They might want you to think they’re Irish but Bono was born in Assunta Hospital, and why do you think this newspaper has the same name as the band’s guitarist, The Edge? And where is Malaysia’s supply of Guinness brewed? PJ. U2 really captured the essence of PJ because Jalan 6/2 is not a name, it’s a file number. Section 18 is about 30 miles from Section 19, and it has never been scientifically proven that Section 9 actually exists. But it has probably worked to the advantage of PJ that it has such bland names as “SS2” because otherwise, its areas would have been ceaselessly renamed after a succession of once fashionable but now barely remembered politicians. We seem to be under the mistaken impression that succeeding inside a political party is a genuine achievement.
The streets are important. We travel up and down them every day and yet I don’t think we’re ever allowed to feel like they belong to us. If a bunch of foreign VIPs are coming to town, then all the streets are shut down and we simply have to make our own alternative plans. If somebody wants to have a truly ridiculous motorcar race downtown, then everybody else has to suffer. And if somebody wants to change the names of roads then, well, we simply have to adapt to their idea of who should be remembered and who or what needs to be forgotten. It’s no surprise that nobody can remember the names of roads. What’s the point? The name is going to be changed anyway. These are not my streets. I’m just allowed to use them until the rightful owners take them back.
People choose to navigate by remembering landmarks because the hope is that they will be more permanent. Also, a landmark can tell a story. For a lot of people, a certain road junction in PJ is the Rothmans Roundabout. The junction has no official name but it became known as the Rothmans Roundabout. It is no longer a roundabout and the once customary Rothmans billboard has long since gone, so I am beginning to name the junction after the adjacent Hotel Lisa De Inn. I have memories of when Rothmans was a major player in Malaysian life and I can’t help but wonder what happens in a hotel built in the shape of a wedding cake. It’s easier to remember a story than trying to remember Malaysia’s superabundance of numbered roads. That’s more like doing maths.
Yesterday, I was driving along the streets of KL (PJ, to be precise) that I had driven down a thousand times before but this time, I became completely lost and it’s not just because I have become old and senile. The streets of PJ have recently been turned into a confusing one-way system. I wasted ages trying to work out how to get from the A&W drive-in to PJ Civic Centre. It turns out you have to go via Rawang. I will eventually work out how it’s done, and I do appreciate that an attempt is being made to ease traffic congestion (I hope it works … I doubt it will). But as I was driving around, it felt like the streets are the battleground where the authorities assert their claim for control over us. The authorities have the power to change names to suit today’s historical revisionism or change the direction because, well, because they can. And we must simply adapt.
As I was driving around PJ with increasing desperation, I may have driven through the mythical Section 9 but I think I was hallucinating at that point and so I just carried on driving. As U2 said in their other famous PJ song, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.
Reprinted with the kind permission of
