The Last man Standing

In Oscar Wildes’ The Picture of Dorian Gray, all the characters face their tragic finals by either getting murdered or committing suicide. Starting with Sibyl’s suicide, Basil gets slaughtered by Dorian, Alan kills himself, and James Vane is shot by a hunter. The death of Basil, without doubt, was brought by Dorian, but when observed more carefully, I noticed that the death of others also had Dorian as the fundamental cause.   

 

Then, where or who was the centre of that evil, which corrupted Dorian to “murder” so many people? In the beginning of the plot, Dorian was said to be “unstained purity” but towards the end as somebody tells him “the goes the devil’s bargain” he turned out to be the monster he found in the portrait.

 

The first sacrifice of Dorian’s vice was Sibyl Vane, the former fiancé of Dorian who killed herself after Dorian unilaterally broke the marriage. James Vane, the brother of Sibyl Vane, was shot while stalking the “murderer” of his sister, Dorian, by a hunter who had mistaken him as a deer. Then, Dorian reveals his highest potential of wickedness when slaughtering his closest friend Basil and black mailing his chemist friend Alan Campbell to hide the crime scene. Alan, who later kills himself for guiltiness, tells Dorian “You are infamous, absolutely infamous!” after getting threatened that Dorian would publicize his homosexuality if he had not done the job.        

 

Murder after murder, Dorian seems to develop his evilness. Some people say, “as written in the book, the “yellow book” was the core of the bad influence.” But then as Wilde wrote “All art is quite useless,” could it really have been that single book that destroyed Dorian? And after every incident, Dorian still seems to have some moral senses, which are however; all contradicted by Lord Henry. From the very beginning of the story, Lord Henry has had a great amount of influence on Dorian and it can be seen from “Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and still the more poisonous influence came…” Also, as Lady Naborough said “Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.” Many parts of the book proved his evilness.

 

Sibyl died from a broken heart and the failed relationship that devastated was actually due to Lord Henry who, behind the scenes, persuaded Dorian to break up with Sibyl because “One should never make one’s debut with a scandal.” Lord Henry, with his villainous character, not only encourages immorality, but also destroys the existing morality within Dorian by constantly justifying the immoral actions that Dorian himself regrets. After the death of Alan, Dorian falls in sorrow for luring the man into his death but Lord Henry describes it as “It’s the man’s own fault. Why did he get in front of the guns?”

 

The story ends by Dorian killing himself after acknowledging the tragic outcome of his wrong doings in the severely wrecked portrait. Finally, with Dorian committing suicide as a result of the immorality, which was introduced to him by Lord Henry, Lord Henry eventually becomes the “core” of all tragedies. And as of what I noticed to be very interesting, he was the only man alive, or the “last man standing.”  

   

 

                                             

 

 

Xiao! Wang Jing

“Wang, duck down a bit.”

“W…What? Why should I? Where am I? Where’ you guys bringin’ me? Please let me go I gotta go and finish my Common App tonight.”

I refused to move despite the rigid hand tugging on my arm, forcing me to keep on walking. The hand of the person that tied this annoying cloth around my eyes, probably that of Franky; it sounded like him, felt like him, and most of all, smelled like him. Well, I obviously knew that there had to be many others involved in this besides him. Not only could I smell a crowd around me, but I also heard the mocking giggles that have been irritating me ever since they “kidnapped” me in front of the Yoga house. The group mainly consisted of my homeroom classmates but with Liz missing. Liz and I have been together for 3 years; I recognized her scent within the radius of several yards. Unlike me, Liz was an outgoing, active girl, and it was quite strange to not have her participate in a prank played, especially, on her own boyfriend.    

 

“Chai hong Yoga house”, as its name suggests, is a small yoga academy located on Millwood Avenue, the main street of China Town Virginia, where my mom gives yoga lessons during weekday evenings to most of Virginia’s bourgeois housewives. It was awkward to have 15 “elegant” female Anglo-Americans gliding through china town in their silver Audi’s but my mom’s fancy resume of being an Olympic bronze medalist kept luring them in to this shaggy neighborhood for over ten years.

 

Barely ten minutes ago, was I there on the shaggy road, to pick up mom’s unlaundered yoga outfit. Now, I’m headed into some kind of a naughty mischief my friends prepared for me. I felt bad. And I meant it. Tonight was the perfect chance to finish my grand experiment with the perfumes. I’ve been working for almost 3 years now, to make the perfect scent for Liz’s graduation gift and I had only 2 months left until I finish it, give it to her, and finally enjoy myself cuddling with the perfect girl perfumed with the perfect scent. Even mom said she’ll be working late at dad’s restaurant, helping with the group reservation, or some teens having a birthday party. That bought me a ton of private time. I had no time to waste; my clock was ticking away. Whoever it was that was playing this time consuming prank on me, I would most certainly take revenge on as soon as it ended.

But for now, Franky was my one and only guidance, preventing me from bumping into stuffs. I could identify people, food, and the overall atmosphere by simply sniffing the mid-air, but not walls and ceilings. Some smelled like wet fungi but usually they smelled like nothing. 

“Ouch”

“See? I told you to duck down. It’s in part your fault. Who told you to be so tall?”

 

Okay. The first one on “People to Revenge” list was definitely Franky. My forehead began throbbing. I get the feeling it’s going to bruise tomorrow. I tried to take my attention off from the pain and on to something like “Where was I going?” My forehead told me that I was indoors, just past some kind of an arch-shaped entrance, and for the rest, my nose went on doing its job. With the eyes disabled, my nose became extra sensitive.

 

“Sniff”

 

Yuan xi, or Chinese parsley. Followed by sesame oil, rice, pork, ginger, garlic, spring onion, pepper, chilly, soy sauce, oyster sauce all blended and complementing each other as if… As if it was it was the smell of my father’s apron I remember as a child. The apron of a head chef in Beijing’s largest hotel always smelled like a mouth watering Chinese dish garnished with freshly chopped Yuan xi, in it catching the story of the chef’s hard day and telling it to his son. Cilantro, or Yuan xi, for me, was the smell of my dad with his generous smile, smell of home back at China, smell of warmth, smell of all things that were taken from me on that plane here to America. Tabooed from coming near their restaurant, attending boarding school, and being forced to become an “Intellect” unlike them for 12 whole years, I had almost forgot the scent of it. The piercing scent of cilantro grasped my fading memory of comfort; comfort that existed before our family was flew out of China in search for the American dream, while sitting on an intractable amount of debt. For the first time in 12 years, I felt warm, and then I realized that for the first time in 12 years, I had stepped in to a Chinese restaurant.

 

“Surprise!”

 

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness it had been missing for an hour. Then first came the sight of Franky, then my friends, then the scene of a Chinese restaurant….Then mom? She looked shocked just as much as I did. A brief sense of empathy came across me, then in a matter of seconds; however, a gush of anger had swept it off its feet.

 

“What the hell??”

 

I could hear my heart pound in my ears.

“Tada~ It’s your Birthday Wang Jing!”

 

There was a cake on the table, and their eyes were full of silent pride of accomplishment. They did indeed succeed in surprising me. They had just broken my, no my family’s life-time taboo. And now, it was MY turn to show them what they had just done. The quiet, introverted Chinese nerd was off the leash. I grabbed Franky by his hair.

“What are you doing! Wang Jing Stop!!”

 

Just before I banged Franky’s head against the table, I saw the menu chart fall from my mom’s trembling hands, on to the floor. And that was when the time halted.

 

“……..”

 

Not a sound was made, nor a breath was taken. I let go of the hair. A handful remained in my fist, Franky screamed a scream of a pig and people started screaming along, but I couldn’t feel nor hear any of it. I read the title out loud.  

“Xiao Wang Jing”

My father came out of the kitchen with a rather embarrassed smile on his face as if I had discovered his little secret he had hoped to keep to himself. Or of naming the restaurant in the name of his son “The smile of Wang Jing.”

 

Suddenly, my senses came back with the olfactory sense reacting as the first. The soothing aroma of cilantro took me down. The anger, the shock, the confusion were all malfunctioning. I felt high in the scent of yuan xi, the Chinese restaurant, my father’s apron, and of my childhood comfort.

 

That night I was half out of mind, I didn’t do anything, say anything, not eat anything until I stood in front of my perfume collections,madly searching for the last scent that would satisfy the lacking 2 percent of my grand project. I carefully took the spoid, on the verge of going mad with excitement, and perfected the aroma of my memory. Basking in my own glory, it was only after I had put on the lid written “Yuan xi” back on the bottle, that I realized I had created a cilantro-scented perfume for my girlfriend.        

Me Nam is Didi

 

In a classroom dimly lit by thin streaks of sunlight coming from the glass-less windows and ventilated by two wooden fans barely hanging on to the ceiling, awaited fifty pairs of eyes glistening with reserved excitement. For the first few days of class, I was simply the new “miss.” From the morning greetings of “Good morning miss” to common questions such as”You nam (name in Hindi) miss?” despite my efforts of crying out “Me nam is Min!” the replacement of the two “ss’s” with an “N” seemed nearly impossible.

Of all the classes, the Bengali class 7 and 8 was the shiest, yet the most diligent, and eventually the most memorable. To be honest, after the first class, I secretly hoped to change classes to that of a lower grade; I had dreamt of something less quite, more aggressive, and fun. Then on the next day, I dragged myself into the same class, wishing that it would end even before it started, frustrated already at the thought of being called “miss” all day.

I carelessly started handing out two sheets of colored papers, not really minding what pair of colors left my hand. Everybody seemed happy with what they got, pink and yellow, purple with light green, blue and red, but except for Pinky, who kept on looking down at her papers in an attempt to hide the disappointment in her face. And not thinking much about it again, I switched one of her two brown papers with a pink one; she was“Pinky” after all. “Tangku miss” she replied to me with such an over-sized smile that it almost embarrassed me. So everyone was satisfied in the end, excluding myself, working on their “bird in the cage" eye illusion crafting where you draw a cage on one paper, a bird on the other, and spin to see the “bird in the cage.” I was so bored I could almost hear a clock ticking over the dull, monotonous sounds of pencils scratching.

Another 40 minutes seemed to have somehow crawled past me without any deviations. However, just like any other surprises, mine also came at the very end. 5 minutes remaining for class, I was going around taping the two papers on to a stick so I could finally wrap up my boredom. It became Pinky’s turn to give me her papers for taping but instead of handing me the paper, she told me to lean over the desk and bring my ears closer as if she was going to whisper a secret to me. A bit annoyed, I did as she told me, I leaned over the desk to hear her little secret in an exaggeratedly enthusiastic manner. Fortunately, she didn't seem to care nor be suspicious, with her simple hesitant action, she just left me in a state of sudden shock. For the first time something deviated from my expectations, for the first time in India I was called by the name“didi” and for the first time ever in my life, kissed by a girl on my cheeks.

 

From that day on, I don’t know what Pinky did to her classmates, but class 7 and 8 certainly became my favorite class. They seemed to be thankful and happy even of the most minor things we did for them; for example individually asking their names and telling mine in return. All of the girls started calling me “didi”, we held hands when walking on the same direction on the street, and on the last day of class, Pinky brought her hair bands to braid (braiding the hair in two strips is the most signature hairstyle in school) my hair just like she braided hers. Even until the day I left India, the class stayed quite, gave me a bunch of bashful smiles and was not exactly referred to as “Min”. But rather, something more than just “Min” and I guess for them, that was a sister or “Didi” as they used to call me.