Outpouring of sympathy among capital's poor for those with even less
After leaving the Malaysian capital last Monday to spend a week reporting on the plight of tsunami-hit villagers in northern Penang and Kedah states, I returned on Sunday to witness another kind of tsunami in the city.
A huge wave of sympathy has engulfed Kuala Lumpur amid a massive effort to raise cash, food, medicine and clothes for tsunami victims, as Malaysians nationwide rush to help survivors around the region.
Fund-raising campaigns have been launched by schools, restaurants, sports clubs, media organisations and several large corporations, which are also collecting relief supplies - mainly clothes, dried food, bottled water and medicine.
Roads in Brickfields, a depressed suburb south of the city, were clogged on Sunday as hundreds of vehicles laden with donations headed to Buddhist and Hindu temples that are raising funds for victims in neighbouring Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.
Whole families of donors, many of them Chinese Buddhists, abandoned their cars and completed their journeys to the relief centres on foot, carrying boxes and plastic bags.
'The heart-rending thing is that poor villagers are the hardest hit,' said one donor, Fan Ping Jao, a teacher.
'We decided not wait for the rich nations to come forward. We can do it first.'
A row broke out at one of the relief centres when officials refused to accept any more donated clothes.
'Our ashram is jam-packed with thousands of boxes of used clothes ... we can't take any more,' said volunteer official Ramakrishnan Palanivel, pointing to a sign in English announcing the centre was accepting only cash donations.
'I don't read English,' an upset Bala Chelliah shouted in Tamil.
'I took two buses to get here with these clothes ... this is my donation and it comes from the heart.'
Many of Malaysia's minority Tamil population have family and friends in India and Sri Lanka.
Celebrities are joining the relief effort by auctioning personal items to raise cash, while schoolchildren are donating whatever savings they have.
'They are dying, I pity them,' said nine-year-old Junaydi Baharudin, who donated a jar full of coins that he had been saving to buy a bicycle.
Restaurants are handing over their day's takings, and shipping companies and airlines are also pitching in, pledging free transport of relief items.
'The outpouring of sympathy and passion to help is unbelievable,' Catholic priest Paul Francis said.
The government has agreed to allow its air space and two airports to be used as co-ordination centres for international relief operations.
