Being on the inside: he had forgotten that there was even an outside to be kept away from. In the mornings, during his first year, sunlight would shimmer in from the frosted glass of the tiny window on his cell door. The rays would diffuse throughout the cell, casting spectral bands of colored light upon the opposite wall that would move in an arc along its concrete façade with the sun throughout the day, until finally it dimmed again in the evening and the light bulbs in the corridor were turned on. About 10 months ago, however, someone had made the decision to replace the light fixtures in the corridor outside the cells with fluorescent lighting, which subsequently remained alit day and night. They covered the windows in the corridor with boards and the lights were left on constantly, making it impossible to determine the time of day or, for that matter, how quickly or slowly time was truly passing. Of course, there were other ways for him to gauge the passage of time. For example, through the timing of his meals, which were not meals, per se, but, more accurately, bowls of insipid gray beans that were sent down to him three times a day by way of dumbwaiter. Another way that he managed to get a feel for the time was from the footsteps in the hallway, as the other inmates filed out to the Yard for Courtship Hour, which was a kind of after-lunch sex ritual for them. Though his cell door was unlocked during these times, so as to allow him to partake in such activities, Bunnu felt no need to do so and, despite any nostalgic urges he might have had to feel the sun once again beat down upon his face as in his childhood, he couldn’t bear up with the compromise inherent in viewing the outside world through the glass of the geodesic dome that encapsulated the Yard, and so he opted instead to stay in the comfortable quarters of his cell—for he knew the ‘outside’ would only be disappointing. After all, the facility was airtight and hence, even in open spaces, he would be restricted in his access to the ‘outdoors’ and made to endure the irksome artificiality of this environment, which was disingenuously punctuated by trees, rock formations, and flora that were all said to be native to the Asoka Plains area—which wouldn’t have seemed so bad if such things were natural, instead of intentional components of a microcosmic design hyper-real in its attributes. This just made it all seem like some attempt to institutionalize his interaction with the natural world. He didn’t like being in a position of conditional freedom, subject to terms predetermined by the administrators of this facility. If there was freedom to be had in the open air, there need not be terms attached, much less permission given by some authority that one is meant to answer to. Thus, it seemed a waste of time.
For him, it was much more satisfying to stay indoors as Courtship Hour was the quietest part of the day. The part he looked forward to most as it was his only chance at uninterrupted, silent introspection. And usually, he spent his time laying flat on his back on the concrete floor, staring at the ceiling and allowing his eyes to lose their focus. He spread his fingers out against the cool surface of the floor and tried to imagine every muscle in his body entering a state of deep relaxation. The relaxation spread up from the tips of his fingers and toes, and down from the top of his head until all five sections met up in his chest, where he imagined his center of gravity to be. He felt the fragments interlock like parts of a puzzle and before he knew it, his chest was in rhythmic concert with these pieces, rising and falling in deep breaths amidst this feeling that his body itself was beginning to get numb and his awareness had receded to an infinitesimal point somewhere in the core of his Being. Immersed in these depths, his vision faded and his thoughts began to wander. In fact, his surroundings, though clearly present, lost their solidity until he was merely a particle hovering in a vast empty space that had once been the domain of an elaborate legerdemain of perception. The outer edges of this dense, concentrated particle that constituted his Being, began to stretch in parallel with an irresolute plane that was adjacent in a direction from him unknowable—unknowable, perhaps, due to the neurotic nature that this planar entity seemed to possess, inclining it to vacillate periodically from its original orientation and thus change its juxtaposition with respect to him, to the utter annoyance of the more steadfast amongst its brethren planes—which impelled him, though he understood that this entity was uniquely skewed in relation to the other planes, to feel with it a kind of bond, a recognition that he might have failed to realize fully in those moments that he was otherwise distracted by his own senses. Consequently, he was compelled to remain adjacent to it as there seemed to be a sort of mutual identification that underlie their affinity with one another. Yes, he felt he could identify with it: more so than he did with the other planes from which this one differed—not really through any sense of stability implicitly afforded by its presence, but quite on the contrary, as a result of the discomfort caused by its tremulous nature, which was something that he found oddly absorbing. After all, how could he carry on deceiving himself into believing that solace was to be found through this process of introspection, when in fact, for him it was a source of greater dubiety than assurance? Perhaps, in proximity with other planes, he may well have felt different about the whole experience, though it seemed imprudent to consider such things when he was fully aware of his inability to reconcile himself with the infallibility of something that masqueraded itself in a veil of pure reason. And thus, this humble, unresolved plane seemed like the more honest option, as it didn’t proclaim to offer any answers. He had, after all, found not peace, but great despair in his various dives deep into the vast trenches of his Intellect, at first, indulging himself in the possibility of answers through self-realization, only to find, in their stead, a greater emptiness, replete not with answers, but with more and more doubt. And then to bear witness to a shivering plane which offered no comforts or explanations, but which was, in fact, meek at the prospect of his acquaintance: something about it seemed better than Truth, because perhaps this plane could not give him the answers he sought, and more importantly, because it seemed to imply that any answers that could be had would never outweigh the benefit of doubt. And yet, it seemed strange that such an entity should quiver uncontrollably by simple virtue of his existence in parallel. In fact, he was perplexed that it would see him as anything more than another entity that had come into proximity with its own domain. Nonetheless, he could not forbear to gaze mindfully upon the hanging question mark that circulated around this paradoxical mutualism that seemed to exist between them, as though it implored him to carry on, not in transcendental fulfillment, but in a state of defiance to the act of surrender, to that inscrutable and utter devotion that the more enlightened had proclaimed to be crucial to this process of self-realization. This act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox—for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless—from his own perspective—the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions.
And so it was that Bunnu would reemerge in the cell to the sounds of the other inmates returning from the Yard and he would find himself, not refreshed, but with his scalp stinging, blood boiling with impatience, as he struggled to breathe. He awoke on the cold hard surface of the floor, unable to move at first and shocked at the realization that he had been holding his breath, though this had not been his intention. The experience had drained him and made him feel a kind of anxiety, causing him to wonder momentarily why he’d even bothered, though he knew that he was simply musing over this in the heat of a frustration that would soon cool over.
Bunnu would then hear the sound of the guards stopping at the door of each cell to make sure that the inmates were back in. There was a pounding on the iron door, a low mumble of voices and then a hush that seemed to fall over both the guard and the inmate before the heavy door was shut again with a dull thud and locked. He could hear this same pattern repeating itself
over and over, from all the way down the corridor, progressively growing louder as the guards slowly approached his cell. They would reach Yoshio’s cell and he could hear them engaged in a bit of bargaining, as Yoshio likely had some kind of side business going with the guards. The door would then slam shut and they would move on to Vikram’s cell. Vikram usually remained quiet and well-behaved as he was under the impression that this sort of compliance would get him out of the facility much quicker. Vikram’s cell door would slam and Bunnu would find himself jumping at the loudness of the sound, as his hairs stood on end in anticipation of their arrival. Yet, they would skip over his door, whispering among themselves and giggling as they moved on to Jagdish, who would greet them with an insidious cackle.
At first, he had seen the guards’ actions as an oversight. They may have simply forgotten he was there. However, this didn’t make sense, as he was still receiving regular deliveries of his meals by dumbwaiter, as well as fresh diapers from the diaper hatch that fed into a wicker basket next to his mattress. Surely, the guards knew he was there. There was no doubt about this. They simply left his door unlocked, because there was no longer any reason to lock it from the outside. And they were probably making no mistake in assuming so.
The fact of the matter was that he saw no reason to leave the cell, as it would only propel him into situations that required social contact with the other inmates, which made the very thought of even touching the doorknob seem ghastly. The inmates: he had never seen any of them, but had heard their voices and their movements. The scraping of their toes and heels against the floors, the padded plastic wrap sound of changing diapers, torsos bumping against walls, the reverberations of their flatulence, which could only have been due to the insipid gray beans. He heard their whispers as they passed his cell door on their way back in from the Yard and the subsequent screams from within the cells to companions from whom they were now separated by layers of concrete and iron. He knew the inmates purely by their sounds…but could he even trust that these noises were real and not imagined?
Figments, Fabrications