A senior in my uni once asked me – do I know the meaning of voyeurism?
I can’t remember what I wrote.
Today, I fell in love. Spent the best 2 hours of my life marveling and loving quite possibly, the only 2 people in the world who get it. They don’t know me. I don’t know them. Do I want to know them? I feel like I already do.
I found their photo album by chance. You could say that I’ve been there before, but I only manage to stay for a few minutes and then moved on to whatever struck my fancy then. Today though, because I had a lot of time to kill, and because it was just me and my perfect lonely self, I explored their world.
Their pictures told me stories. They took me to way back in 2001, when they were yet to be married, still courting, him looking way better looking than now, her totally luscious and sexy. They shared the same passion and unconditional love for the great outdoors and the physical exertion that beckons us. Over pictures of them roughing it over dirt bikes and mud tracks, climbing over the steep jagged gray rocks to catch the sleepiest sunrise ever, I fell in love. I fell in love with the couple I’ve always wanted to be, even if I had to do it alone.
Their travels wrapped my senses in China Silk. I saw them eating goree with the locals in Kerala, hiking up the trails in Scotland, swimming with the elephants in Vinh, feeding monkeys somewhere in Egypt (do they have monkeys in Egypt? Apparently their Egypt does). They even took the time to catch the same music festival for two consecutive years, with the likes of Ronnie James Dio and Anthrax. I love to see how their hairstyle changed over the course of one year but their sleeping bags and ‘festival’ boots and affectionate gestures remain the same.
The best pictures are the ones that are close to home. They took their kids (3 girls) deep into the stomach of Gua Tempurung, in which I remembered to be super dark and eerie and you can literally feel the little thin water snakes squirming under your palms while you crawled your way out of the darkness. They spent a night in Manong, a sleepy, very very tiny town deep in Perak and just surprisingly, 30 minutes off Kuala Kangsar. Year 2007 was the year I saw their beautiful journey to the land of the Holy, 40 days seeking solace and some soul searching under the beautiful guidance of God. They must have been 33 years old. I saw her looking touchingly pretty covered up in abaya and the hijab, and recalled a picture taken of her in 2001 with a black and white string bikini reading a book by the beach. In Hawaii.
Looking at their pictures, I felt a longing I can’t describe but can perfectly place; I have felt it so many times before. I think my unexplained need to dig deep into every corner of the world is shared by no one but myself, and I have come to accept that. It is amazingly awesome that in this world, someone like them got so lucky to find each other and be able to quench their thirst of totally being. I, on the other hand, am perfectly content to experience, and perhaps one day to be experiencing, the joy this world has to offer to me, alone, or with a like minded individual.



