Their Only Roof Is The Sky.

Newspapers as mattresses. The cold floor is just a few millimeters away.

Life is cheap in Kuala Lumpur.

NewsChasers has been running around in the heart of Kuala Lumpur to find something that is very disturbing and at the same time bizarre.

They have been KL for god knows when, they are around us, they live with us in our daily lives but still we do not pay much attention to them and to discover their own needs.





They are the homeless people. I have to admit that I don't have the guts to ask for an interview with the homeless. I saw one sleeping just like that. However, the picture is not him as I afraid the flashes from my camera will wake him up.

Somehow, I manage to ask for a short interview which are no more than a few chat with him. There are no recordings, nor pictures of the interviewee as I scare I will startled him.

As I walk up to him I greeted him like how I greeted casually.

There is a feeling inside me, telling me that I should not ask for his name. I skipped to the question.

"Bang? Datang dari mana?"
Where are you came from?

W is the one in the furthest. Gazing through the night.

He replied me with a smile and I have to say the thing that first caught my attention is the teeth. It is yellow, plague all over and his breath made me not able to concentrate on his answer that well.

"Ku dari Medan."
I am from Medan

This is how it all started. I offered him a mineral water and a loaf of bread with kaya and I said, "all I want to do is to talk."

He didn't tell me his name. So I guess I have to name him. Let's call him, W.

W used to live in Medan and hope to secure a living in KL by following his friends. He used to work for a construction company until his friend run away with his money one night.

To make matters even worse, his boss dismisses him from work because the construction project has been abandoned.

He does not want to return to Medan because he is ashamed to face his family members. He promised them that he will make their life better but in the end, he failed.

He survived everyday through begging, scavenging trash bins and desperately pick pocketing bypassers.

He never ask a single thing about me.

My final question to him is-

"Are you tired?"

W tried to commit suicide a few times by drinking heavily and starting a fight with the others. But eventually, he learned that he should wait and try to survive.

After finishing the bread, he stood up and walk towards Puduraya.

Sleeping in broad daylights.

Author's Persona Feeling

Somehow, something inside me started to change and I knew it.

People like these don't choose to be like that. Life is never fair. All they want to do is to hope to bring a little bit of money back for their families.

Sometimes it was us that create such monsters and yet we are the one who complain.
How could someone abandoned people's rice bowl for wealth?

What has been learned from this journey is we have indirectly created such monstrosity of the society.

Written By: Yeong Zi Wen
Edited By: Yeong Zi Wen.