T h e F e s t i va l O u t s i d e S h a r m i l l a G a n e s a n
They told her she was one of the last of her kind. They looked all over Kuala Lumpur before getting word of her, through hazy stories and half-recalled visits. When they walked into her tiny ground- floor flat, they stared at her with barely contained excitement. Are you..? Yes. Oh, we thought it was just a story. No, I’m definitely real. Do you still…? Oh! Not really. Do you still remember? How could I forget? I did it every single day. Well, we have a proposal for you. And that was how she ended up here, under a large, makeshift umbrella in the middle of Dataran Merdeka. She wondered about the others. In the early days of the first lockdown — was it 20 years ago? No, 25 — many of them had left the city, back to their kampungs. The ones left in KL, retreated indoors. They said it was safer like this, and what was there to do
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