I would like to add my voice to Badan Warisan’s call to raise the status of Pudu Jail to a heritage building.

             

I was born a short distance from Pudu Jail, and until now have had the good fortune to keep out of it. Nonetheless, this is a building of singular significance with great cultural, historical and landscape merit.

Recently, standing at the kuala (river mouth) where the Sg. Batu and the Sg. Gombak merge – now little more than a sight of large concrete drains – I noted the hurly-burly development that my city has been subject to, and found a once glorious waterway bidding a teardrop.

What a shame it is that our city fathers, developers and town planners have so little appreciation of things of heritage value and, despite being offered counsel for the greater good, are so quick to take the ball and hammer to anything that stands in the way of making a pile.

Send these folks back to school in an ambulance so that they can be taught that life is much more than the dance around a box of ringgit.

Affected by the same mindset, our great historical city of Melaka has been all but ravaged by development and land reclamation.

Great cities like Paris and London, old as they are, retain their layers of history as they evolve, and walking in their streets and buildings, we can be overwhelmed by the depth and wealth of their past – bold, bloody or sublime.

It is the sort of palimpsest that creative minds – writers, artists, movie-makers, musicians, designers, architects, and indeed from any field of human inquiry – often turn to for a spark of inspiration.