An Immigrant In My Own Country

Star Q

i.  Peach and Cheddar Cheese cake

ii.  Movie Poster for Writing

iii.  Kursus Pemantapan Pedagogi

Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, one of the busiest roads in Kuala Lumpur, used to be my favourite haunts many, many years ago; twenty-three years ago to be exact.  I was doing my one-year specialist course there and so almost every weekend I would take the bus to the city bus terminal and walked all the way there and back.

But that was then when things to me seemed a little laid back compared to what it is today.  Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, or Jalan TAR as it is affectionately known, used to be a place where I could find almost anything I wanted; from clothes to books and from handicrafts to kitchenware.

Now, the building where Mun Loong, the department store selling everything under the sun, has now been taken over by a store selling bundles and bundles of clothing materials.  The shop lot where the proud book store Minerva used to be, is taken over by yet another store selling clothing materials.  Minerva presently is now a modest, much smaller shop lot selling very limited range of books and other reading materials compared to what it used to carry.  Gone are the glossy, imported American and British magazines; gone also are the wonderful rows upon rows of bookshelves which used to hold best-selling English novels by famous authors.

In short, Jalan TAR has been turned into a shopping haven for people looking for clothing materials of all designs and origin.  It has become another place no different from other places selling clothing materials.  To top it all off, it has also lost its identify as a famous Malaysian street because, for the two hours I was there, sitting on a bench under a tree in front of Insaf Restaurant, more than seventy-five percent of the people who walked pass me that day, were either of Arabic or Indo-Chinese origin, Bangladehis, Pakistanis or Indonesians.

I felt like I was an outsider sitting in a foreign country and for the first half an hour I was there I felt a bit lost.  I felt like an immigrant in my own country!  It took me some time to realise that I had really lost my love for this street I once frequented, not only because of the exiled feeling that overcame me but also because most of the things I once loved are now gone and have totally disappeared in the twenty-three years I had left it.

There is a saying that goes like this; 'Time heals all wounds!'  Sadly though, that is totally untrue in this situation because instead of healing the old wounds that were there in Jalan TAR previously, time has exacerbated those injuries and turned them into gaping wounds, giving them no possible chance to heal.