Rajeev's World: The Stunning, Bejeweled Petronas...

Just as the Gateway of India is an iconic symbol representing Mumbai, over the last two decades, the Petronas Twin Towers have become an unmistakable of both Kuala Lumpur, as well as Malaysia. No visit to KL can actually be complete without paying an obligatory obeisance at the Twin Towers...

Our commute from Jalan Petaling to the Petronas Twin Towers was quite interesting. We tried to hail a cab and a lot like a few cities in India, the cabbies figured out that we were tourists, and that we were easy prey. We were quoted an absurd amount of MYR 100 for a 3-kilometre ride! What the...?

A quick search on Google told me that the cab ride shouldn't cost more than MYR 20. Not in a mood to give in, we decided to hop on to a local bus that would take us right in front of Petronas.

A friendly, middle-aged Malay lady guided us to the bus terminal and told us to board a bus that was still on its stand. This was not one of the RapidKL buses that we had seen on the streets here in the last two days. It looked more like a private bus, much like the Blueline buses that used to operate in Delhi a few years back. The driver and the conductor, both, looked like hardened street urchins. A few commuters outside confirmed to us that this bus would indeed take us to the Twin Towers.

With a bit of trepidation we climbed on to the bus. Much to our relief, there were quite a few families and single women on board, and this sight reassured us.

Just to reconfirm, we asked the Chinese lady sitting ahead of us if the bus would take us our next destination, the Petronas. Yes, she said...

Neeti and I got into a conversation in Hindi "Pata nahi is ladki ko samajh bhi aayi hai ya nahin?" (I'm not sure whether she really understood us or not?)

After a few minutes, we again asked her if she understood us or not. To our surprise she replied in Hindi - "Haan, yeh bus aapko Petronas le jayegi!" (Yes, this bus will take you to Petronas!).

We turned red in our faces at the faux-pas we had unwittingly committed, and chose to stay quiet during the 15-minute bus ride. Probably, she was from the North-East of India and we mistook her for a Chinese.

After we got off the bus, Neeti and I had a good laugh about this unintended faux-pas. But the beauty of the Petronas Towers, right across the road made up for our embarrassment!

And we found the vantage point from where we could capture the Towers in their entirety...

Both of us spent a few minutes feverishly clicking each other against the Petronas, when two elderly British couples walked past us and stopped right there. One sweet old lady chuckled and asked Neeti in strongly accented British English "Dear, may I offer to a photograph of the two of you?"

The lady put in quite an effort to click us. She squatted on the pavement and came up with a picture that is one of the best amateur shots that we have of both us! God bless her!

The Menara isn't too far from here...

Each floor of the Petronas was illuminated in such a manner as though multiple diamond bracelets had been stacked one on another....

This looked beautiful, we were indeed mesmerised...

The Towers were designed by the Argentinian architect, Cesar Pelli. Planning for the Towers started in 1992, constructed started in 1994 and construction was completed in 1997. It's a different matter that the formal opening happened only in 1999, presided over by the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.

When completed, the Towers were formally declared as the tallest in the world and the opening coincided with the advent of the South East Asian financial crises, from which Malaysia has never really recovered.

The curse of the skyscrapers, it appears was at work. Observers have postulated that an irrational exuberance in the economy leads to the construction of such "Towers of Babel", ultimately leading to a crash in the economy. I had written about these Towering Ambitions way back in 2010!

The Towers have a steel and glass facade designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art and they share an Islamic-influenced geometrically polygonal cross-sectional plan, resembling Rub el Hizb (ربع الحزب‎) - a Muslim symbol, represented as two overlapping squares.

Tower One is fully occupied by the Malaysian oil & gas company, Petronas, while Tower Two is occupied by Huawei Technologies, Al Jazeera, Carigali Hess, Bloomberg, Boeing, Microsoft, IBM, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund - Khazanah Nasional Berhad, McKinsey, India's Wipro, TCS, HCL Technologies and Reuters.