By Mehru Jaffer

One afternoon last November I flew into Kuala Lumpur's Suban International Airport, the only one in the world perhaps that is cradled in the lap of a lush rainforest, to be greeted by a nation in mourning. Nikky at the airport's taxi service said that Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, the 11th king had passed away that morning. Rajan, the taxi driver called the 75 year-old Sultan of Selangor, a people's king and added that he was proud of the Malaysian monarchy. To Rajan, whose calling card describes him as an "executive chauffeur" and includes his mobile telephone number, the country's constitutional monarchy is a symbol of continuity and national unity. He would hate to see it abolished despite the opinion of some others who feel that all the pomp and show is meaningless and an unnecessary burden on the state exchequer. Unlike monarchies in other parts of the world, the royal throne here is unique for more reasons than one. The king is elected every five years on a rotational basis amongst eight other sovereigns who are already rulers at the state level. 

Since the throne is not inherited weeks can lapse before the next king is elected by the council of nine rulers from different provinces. The television and newspapers were crowded with full page details about the royal funeral and tearful pictures of the recently widowed Siti Aishah, the pretty queen only in her early 30s. The media hype was similar to the obsession of the British with members of their own royal family. At the Istana Negara, the official residence of the king of Malaysia on a hillock and away from the heat and dust of the city, the resemblance to London's Buckingham palace is complete especially during the ceremonial changing of guards. 

Driving into the city saw flags flying at half mast as a period of seven days of mourning was declared. The staff at the hotel suggested that a public holiday is actually a good time to drive around the city as it is free of its legendary traffic jams. Azhar, another taxi driver was happy to take me to the Twin Towers although he has never found the time to climb to the top of the latest icon of the city's economic power. He is pleased that his city is home to the tallest towers for that makes the whole world know about Kuala Lumpur. Ramesh Biswas, an architect friend who spent his childhood in Kuala Lumpur and editor of Metropolis Now, lumps the Twin Towers together with Karaoke Architecture that is visible to him in all the "tiger economies" of South East Asia. In karaoke it is not important how well you can sing, he says, what matters is that you do it with verve and gusto. The policy of trying to get the biggest and the highest of everything even succeeds as today there is hardly anyone who is not aware of the 88 storeys, 450 metres of glittering steel and glass and 180,000 square metres per office tower that is advertised on millions of picture postcards and visible within the ancient Klang valley for tens of kilometers. 

Since the city is still in search of its place on the globe prestige projects continue to be constructed. In fact many describe the city as an on-going building site ever since it was born in 1857. It was the southwest coastal town of Malacca that was always the most important city in South East Asia since the second millennium while Kuala Lumpur was just a muddy delta where two rivers met. At first it was the Chinese tin miners who cleared the jungles and built settled there. The Malay Sultans were happy to be away from both the mosquitoes and the miners and remained in their comfortable capital of Klang just north of Malacca. But tin mining soon brought in much money. In 1885 Yong Koon expanded the tin business into pewter and founded the Royal Selangor legacy of craftsmanship. It is fascinating to drive down to the Royal Selangor pewter showroom and factory to watch Malaysian artisans hand caste and engrave on exquisite items to this day. The British came next and towards the end of the 19th century replaced the settlement of haphazard wooden structures of the tin miners with an urban pattern of shop houses connected by an endless row of arcades that helped to protect pedestrians from the heat, humidity and tropical rainfall. 

In the meanwhile the Chinese made enough money to construct temples and own shops. The British brought in Indians to help them build railway lines, labour in rubber plantations and just before they left Malaysia in 1957 Indian professionals replaced the English in offices, hospitals and in schools. Just like the coastal towns of the Malaysian peninsula, Kuala Lumpur too became a meeting place not just of the two muddy rivers but adventurers, fortune hunters and romantics from across Asia. In the midst of the phalanx like construction of today, some parts of the pretty arcades still remain. But the home of Yap Ah Loy the Chinese who founded Kuala Lumpur just a 150 year ago is long replaced by the multi storeyed offices of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. The grey block of concrete looming over the oldest mosque in town tries to tower over the exquisite Moorish architecture. But it is heartening to see the mosque so spick and span and awash in a paint so white that its glow in the morning sunlight equals that of all the steel and glass surrounding it, as if to say that there can not be much of a future without a past.

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