Kuala Lumpur's Little India, built on a brick works, with banana-leaf rice and the best temples in the city.
Brickfields is named for exactly what it sounds like. After the fire and flood of 1881 destroyed much of Kuala Lumpur’s wooden buildings, the British Resident Frank Swettenham ordered that the town be rebuilt in brick and tile, and the clay pits and kilns that supplied it were here.
The workforce was largely Tamil, brought from South India by the colonial administration, and the community that grew around the brickworks — later reinforced by the railway depot next door, which also recruited heavily from India — is still here.
It is Kuala Lumpur’s Little India, and unlike some districts with that label it is a genuinely functioning Indian neighbourhood rather than a themed street.
The food
This is the reason to come.
Banana leaf rice. A banana leaf, rice in the middle, three or four vegetable curries, papadum, and a choice of meat or fish. The servers circulate with more rice and more vegetables and it is understood that you take them. You eat with your right hand.
At the end, fold the leaf towards you if you enjoyed the meal and away from you if you did not — the second is an insult and is noticed.
Thosai and idli for breakfast, with sambar and coconut chutney.
Fish head curry, a Malaysian-Indian invention rather than a South Indian one, and one of the great dishes of the country.
Sweets — ladoo, jalebi, mysore pak — from the shops along Jalan Tun Sambanthan.
Teh tarik everywhere.
The temples and places of worship
Brickfields has an unusual concentration and it is not only Hindu.
Sri Kandaswamy Kovil, a Sri Lankan Tamil temple founded in 1902, with a fine gopuram.
Buddhist Maha Vihara, a Sri Lankan Theravada temple founded in 1894 and one of the most important Buddhist centres in Malaysia. It runs the Wesak Day procession, which is a major event.
The Church of the Holy Rosary (1904) and Lutheran and Methodist churches.
Vivekananda Ashram, a 1904 building of considerable charm that has been the subject of a long preservation fight against development.
Deepavali
The festival of lights, in October or November, is when Brickfields is at its fullest — a bazaar along the main street, lights strung overhead, and the whole neighbourhood open.
Thaipusam in January or February also involves Brickfields heavily.
The honest bit
Brickfields has been squeezed hard by the development of KL Sentral next door, which arrived in 2001 and brought office towers, hotels and land values with it.
Rents have risen, older shophouses have gone, and a district that was working-class and Indian is being steadily rebuilt as something else. The community is still here and the pressure is visible.
Practical
Five minutes on foot from KL Sentral, which makes it the most convenient interesting neighbourhood in the city — and a great many visitors pass through the station without ever walking out of it.
Free to walk. Dress modestly for the temples, shoes off.
Busiest at lunchtime and in the early evening.
