KEEPING IT RAW
ANEES SALIM’S AIM ISN’T TO MAKE GRAND STATEMENTS, BUT TO SIMPLY TELL AN UNFILTERED, POIGNANT, COMPLEX TALE
At one point in Anees Salim’s deeply moving new novel,
The Bellboy (2022), the protagonist, Latif, a young island boy working at a lodge on the mainland, thinks about a newspaper headline he had read earlier: ‘Saffron Sweeps Nation’. Latif, with his very limited English, can’t be sure of what it means, and thus he rearranges the words in his head. Is it “Nation Saffron Sweeps”? Or is it “Nation Sweeps Saffron”? Much later, the words reappear at a crucial moment, and he still does not know their import.
In the hands of many authors, this episode might end up being employed as a tool to underline the plight of a poor Indian Muslim: in danger of being distrusted, made a scapegoat, disproportionately punished. But the fine storyteller that Salim is, so good at immersing us in his characters’ worlds, he is incapable of being pedantic. The beauty of the final, shattering passages of The Bellboy is that while the novel may be read as a tale about the vulnerability of minorities, stranded on a sinking island, it doesn’t have to be read that way; it retains its power as a story about a specific person.
Those familiar with Salim’s work know about this quality. For this reviewer, his last novel, The Odd Book of Baby Names (2021), seemed less effective than his best work because it moved between a dozen characters. With The Bellboy,
Salim returns to the form that made books like Vanity Bagh
(2013) and The Blind Lady’s
Descendants (2014) so brilliant and empathetic. He gives us an unforgettable protagonist, making us care for Latif even as we see his little missteps and foibles—and the qualities that make him as human as any of us. Even when Latif is a victim—whether of circumstance or bigotry—he is so many other things. He is a boy who, in one marvellous, tragic-comic passage, finds himself in a supposedly blasphemous situation, reading surahs for a just-deceased uncle while being well aware that he is still wearing a condom under his trousers. It’s a hilarious moment, and yet, it doesn’t take away from the solemnity of the occasion.
In keeping us rooted to Latif’s consciousness, Salim shows us the many shades of a life. When people commit suicide in their rooms in Paradise Lodge, Latif watches as the hotel manager steals their valuables. We follow his triumphs, along with his fear that trouble will come for him at a moment of glory; his attempt to be a saviour when a boat carrying a group of convent girls stalls; his sadness about his father’s drowning; his concern for his mother and sisters, and for the island that has been declared doomed by ecologists.
Salim steers clear of idealisation. The Bellboy is a portrait so truthful and perceptive that it makes thinking of a person in such limiting terms as “good” or “bad”, “happy” or “unhappy”, entirely futile. This makes Salim’s work more capacious than many novels with grander canvases can be, and The Bellboy is a worthy addition to his oeuvre. ■
Anees Salim makes us care for Latif, the protagonist, even as we see his little missteps and foibles