balancing the scales

You really couldn’t have asked for a lovelier day.

Well, when you’re in Phuket, it’s hard for the days to not be lovely. When your mornings are lazy, afternoons are spent lounging upon white-sand beaches, and nights are drunken away at the local pubs, it’s simple human nature to be engulfed with a sense of gratitude and bliss. 

But today was particularly perfect – the limestone cliffs towered behind a cloudless sky, the sun permeated your skin, but in a way that felt like a caress rather than a sting, and the turquoise water was so translucent that you could see each and every creature that called it their home.

I watched them with fascination, body pressed up against the wood of the dock, staring over the edge, mesmerized at the lively coral city that existed just feet below. It was like they were running their own civilization entirely; parrotfish that shimmered in schools of magenta and teal, the small cleaner fish that picked the parasites off them as they swam leisurely, like a free spa. 

I found that watching the way that life was lived in the ocean gave me a sense of hope for the way we lived on land. I saw the reef as a (much more beautiful) microcosm of human society in itself – besides all of the ruthless capitalist competition, for-profit exploitation, and polarization…

The reef proved to me that life was really a simple thing, humans just loved to complicate it. 

My breath hitched in my throat as a giant hawksbill turtle drifted into my periphery, it moved along the bottom of the reef, snacking on sea sponges like they were mushy crackers. 

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” I hear a familiar voice hang over my shoulder, warm and tender. 

It belongs to Samudra, an elderly woman who resided right next to my condo. I would see her bright and early every morning as she would lay out a beautiful floral arrangement for the shrine outside her home, and would see her tossing them into the ocean every night as I would make my way back to my room. She would smile at me every single time, her entire face blooming with benevolence, and something about it would etch itself into and linger in my very soul.

She almost seemed too kind and pure to be fully human, and sometimes, when I was really intoxicated walking home, I would imagine her as a sort of ocean goddess, or at the very least, a stewardess of the sea. But that was probably just because I was so used to dealing with ignorant, asshole Americans who didn’t care about anything but themselves and the cash lining their pockets. I suppose I had forgotten that humanity could be something beautiful. 

She gazes into the water with stars in her eyes, as if it were a portal to an alternate dimension. “Remove just one of the organisms you see and the entire ecosystem is disrupted – everything is inextricably connected, mutually benefitting and helping each other to thrive. ” 

“Humanity has a lot to learn from reefs,” I reply dryly. 

Sumadra smiles. “Nature holds the antidote to all of our misery.”  

“Truly,” I replied wistfully. “I could watch it forever. Who needs TV when you have this?”

“It used to be even more beautiful, if you can believe it,” she says to me, words laced in a thick Thai accent and laden with remorse. “This reef was so much more vibrant and colorful when I was growing up here. I am glad to see a hawksbill, for there have barely been any anymore.”

“Really?” That comment pulled at one of my heartstrings, and I looked up to meet her gaze. Her expression was somewhere between melancholy and irritation. “What happened?”

She smiled softly at me, in a way that felt both placating and indicting. “Tourists’ happened.”

I felt a flush over my cheeks, and a sink in my chest. She was right, these seasonal vacationers saw this place as nothing more than beach, bars, and bliss – as a haven that existed completely in a vacuum, purely for their own fulfillment and leisure. 

I suppose that, in a sense, so had I. 

Because as much as I shit-talked my fellow ignorant Americans, and did everything I could to disassociate from their out-of-touch and wasteful lifestyle – at the end of the day, I was also one of them. Whether I realized it or not. I thought that fleeing the States would liberate me from their destruction, but what if in doing so I was bringing destruction to somewhere else? 

She took my reflective silence as impetus to continue, resting a hand on my thigh. “This is no admonishment of you, sweetheart. It makes me so happy to see someone who appreciates this beautiful ecosystem we exist in, almost as much as I do,” she adds cheekily, but her face darkens. “It is the corporations and industries, stamping all over our land like it's nothing. They don’t care about us, our way of life, our beautiful oceans. They only care about themselves.”

“And money,” I supplemented, and Sumadra nodded solemnly, shaking her head intensely.

She muttered under her breath; “Damn Americans, tua nam khwaam haa-ya-naw..”

I knew far less Thai than I should for someone who was living there for the time being, but I was able to catch two words – "harbinger" and “destruction.” I could string the rest together.

“They want to take my house, expand their hotel chain.” Samudra said, her tone saltier than the sea as she shook her head. “Offered me more money than I have ever seen in my life.”

I stare at her in shock. “Seriosuly? What are you going to do?”

She stared onto the horizon, which was being emblazoned with the marmalade hues of a burgeoning sunset. “This view is worth so much more than any paper cash they throw at me. 

I smiled, because if there was one thing I had learned here, it was that all of the things that Americans prided as success and fulfillment paled in comparison to a simple sunset in Phuket.

She is backlit by the sky as she stands, posture firm. “They can’t mess with Mother Nature without messing with me. And they can’t mess with me without messing with Mother Nature.” 

She reached into the woven bag strapped diagonally across her body, fishing out some peonies and daylily petals. Every day I had been here I had watched her do the same routine, I almost knew it by heart now. Pray to the ocean, smile at the sky, and scatter to the sea with a kiss.

“Would you like to do the offering with me?” She implores, and I don’t hesitate to reply.

“It would be my greatest honor.” 

She scatters some petals and seeds into my open palms. “This is a custom that we have done for as long as we’ve lived here. If you want the ocean to respect you, you must first respect it.” She hums, forlorn. “We used to wade into the water and place them onto little boats, but as the protective barrier reefs have vanished, the waves are now too unruly to set them for sail.”

I bit my lip, even their most sacred traditions were being threatened by our presence. 

She ushered me to the edge of the dock, “Hold them with love, then release them out to sea.”

I do so, blowing gently on the petals and watching as they drift through the air. But they don’t fall onto the water. They linger in the air for a moment, before being blown right back. Sumadra looks just as confused as I am, but something in her expression tells me she knows more. 

Because the shining smile she had just flashed me moments ago had given way to an expression that could only be described as pure terror and dread. It looked as if all of the blood in her body had frozen, face growing pale as she frantically scanned the reef below us.

“Somethings not right,” she murmured, and I follow her gaze to the reef. My stomach churns as I do so, because all of the wildlife we had been admiring just moments ago – even the cleaner fish – had completely disappeared, leaving a desolate kingdom of greying coral in their wake. 

“What the hell?” I remarked instinctively, turning to face Sumatra.

My heart dropped to my stomach as I took in the look on her face. But she wasn’t looking at me – her gaze is fixed, frozen, on the horizon, the slightest tremble in her left eye. She gasped,, and turned back to face me. I had never seen her face so grim. “We need to leave, right now.”

I’m unable to even articulate a word off my tongue before she's pulling me off the dock and into town. I don’t understand what's happening, but I also don’t ask questions. I scanned the rest of the shore as she drags me away – everyone else is going about as normal. We brushed past an elderly American couple sipping pina coladas on the shore, completely unfazed by whatever Sumatra believes to be happening. Hell, I still didn’t even know what's happening.

But then, the water began to draw backwards. 

“Oh fuck.” My breath caught in my throat as the ocean began to harshly retract before my very eyes, almost doubling the shoreline in mere seconds. The other beachgoers didn’t even seem to notice, too buzzed off their margaritas or heads buried too deep into their phones. 

I wanted to scream at them to run, to flee while they still could, but my voice wouldn’t work. My body wont work, limp as Sumatra guides me through the narrow alleys and to a trail that goes up a hill. There's a seagull on a pole beside us that won’t stop screeching, screaming louder and louder, a natural warning alarm that finally begins to catch the tourists attention. It elicited a cacophony of confusion, perilous screams, and hysteric sobs that rang in my periphery.

Finally, Sumatra leads me up a golden staircase and we come to a stop upon a marble plaza that overlooks the entire town. There is a giant statue of Buddha positioned right in the center, but the figure that usually brought me peace did little to placate me in that moment. 

“This is the highest point,” Sumadra told me. “We’ll be safe here, honey.” 

“You saved my life“ I whisper exasperatedly, holding her tight with gratitude. Because when I look out on the horizon before us, there is no horizon – just a massive wall of impending water.

It nears closer and closer, until it's right there.

I can’t help it when the sobs pour out, as I watch the entire shoreline become engulfed with water. Water that had, just moments earlier, had been the epitome of peace, coexistence and bliss. In mere minutes, all that is left of the town is a few high-rises poking through. All of the small houses that were once there are now but rubble rushing in the current. 

I can still see my condo, but I can’t see Samudra's house. 

“Im so sorry,” I choked out to her.

“All that comes will pass,” is all that she replied, but the grief on her face told a different story.

The tsunami continues to tear through the town, and Mother Nature gives as much regard to man as the tourists did to the land. She wipes it all clean, with no remorse and no regret.

“I don’t understand,” I say to Sumadra. “Weren’t the blessings to keep the ocean from doing something like this to us?”

Samudra has an unreadable expression on her face. “Mother Nature is always just, She only does to us what we have done to her. We must remember that she always holds the ultimate authority when it comes to balancing cosmic scales.” Her lip trembled, “Humanity has already done irreversible damage to her. Sometimes, blessings are just not enough.”

There's a colossal cracking noise, and my high-rise condo comes crashing down into the sea.

I should be sad to see my belongings disappear before my very eyes, but I find myself smiling.

“Maybe now we will finally learn our lesson.”