“As they would go to a holy city to die, people came to Paradise Lodge to end their lives.” This is the first line of Anees Salim’s latest novel, The Bellboy. The spectre of death looms large over Paradise Lodge including Latif, its newest and youngest employee. After Latif’s father dies tragically by drowning in a river, he is assigned the role of the man of the house almost overnight. A scrawny 17-year-old who darkens his whiskers with an eyebrow pencil, Latif is still a child and in no position to bear the responsibilities of his mother and two young sisters. When Latif finds employment as a bellboy at Paradise Lodge, a far cry from its grand name and described as a building “that had not seen a lick of paint in years and wore a sombre brown, akin to the sepia of holy cities”, he does not realise that death will haunt him in a way that life has yet been unable to.
On the very first day when Latif finds a lodger hanging in one of the rooms, he is understandably taken by surprise. He quickly learns that this is the way of life at the lodge – the manager pocketing any valuables on the body, the authorities quietly taking the dead person away, and the staff getting the room ready for new guests to check in.
On his first day, Latif notices a saffron thread on his manager’s wrist – though a young boy, he realises that his Muslim identity will always be a cause of suspicion to his employer. Despite everything, Latif settles into routine. He finds a confidante in the middle-age cleaner Stella, a sanctuary in the shade of the gulmohar tree in the compound, and a sense of self that only money can afford. Life (and death) goes on at Paradise Lodge.
Life in death
This is until a somewhat famous actor checks in at the dilapidated Paradise Lodge and is predictably found dead during the course of his stay. A slight brush with fame and the actor’s mysterious ways catch Lateef’s fancy – he is only too enthusiastic about running errands for this particular guest and especially delighted when he is offered a cigarette by way of a tip. The actor is not fated to live a long life and after he dies, his prized white shirt comes into Latif’s possession following a long and winding journey. The shirt brings him such confusion and grief that it almost feels as if this inconsequential, inanimate object is ridiculing Latif on the instructions of its real master from the great beyond.
In every way, Salim’s characters are unremarkable. Latif, his widowed mother and sisters, Stella, the nameless manager, and even the forgettable actor could be anyone living in any of the unremarkable towns in India. In themselves, they do not have much of a story to tell – bogged down in their own misery and yet keen to ignite a weak fire of rebellion, life does not offer many possibilities. It is the insidiousness of Paradise Lodge – the constant presence of death – that in some ways keeps life going.
Like any boy of his age, Latif spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking, worrying, about the length and girth of his genitalia, fantasising about the female lodgers, and indulging in a child’s fantasy of a marriage. There are long passages and many number of pages where Salim describes in graphic details Latif pleasuring himself and being occupied with thoughts of his organ even in a sombre setting such as his uncle’s funeral. He imagines the lodgers coupling and when girls from a convent school check in for a night, he almost falls in love with one of the bolder students who had winked and waved at him. Had it not been for Latif’s teen age, these details would have been off-putting, or, worse still, unnecessary. By writing about his young protagonist’s sexual escapades in vivid detail, Salim underlines that despite Latif’s unarguably depressing life, his desires and immediate concerns are no stranger than those of another 17-year-old who is lucky enough to go to school and be looked after by his parents.
A story of cinematic grandeur
In many ways, Latif is still a child. He spends his free time regaling Stella with stories of a certain local bully named Ibru. Fearsome yet loveable, Ibru is everything that Latif aspires to be. Soon enough the reader realises that Ibru is Latif’s pet name and his alter ego – a superb device adopted by Salim, these frequent interactions of Ibru/Latif cleanly communicates the innocence (or whatever is left of it) that the young boy is trying so desperately to hold on to.
With his lanky physique, outdated curls, and toilette consisting of dusting himself with talcum powder and drawing a moustache, Latif kindles pity in the reader. I was overcome with a sudden tenderness in the early moments of the actor’s death and Latif’s discovery of the body. About this moment, Salim writes – “He felt a sharp jab of guilt, a severe pang of anxiety, and a strong swell of fear.” The writer wants the reader to see Latif as he is – a young, helpless child who has made an acquaintance with death too early in life. His childish bravado does not hide the fact that he still knows very little of life outside the lodge and his fast-sinking home, an archipelago named Manto Island. Clearly this is not a life that is on path to greatness. Like many children who are propelled into adulthood, Latif’s life has also been streaked with misery that is unique to poverty – both financial and social.
Salim’s strength is his writing. There are very few writers in the English language in India who use words as economically as he does. The dreadfulness of Manto Island and Paradise Lodge are heightened by Salim’s sparse prose. While the spectre of his father’s death follows him everywhere on the island, the lodge’s pact with death entangle his own fate with the dead actor’s – the price of a life must always be paid with another life.
It is in this bleakness and grimness that The Bellboy comes alive. It is true that there are only rare moments of levity and when you do chance upon them, Salim’s writing proves to be that much more remarkable. Despite the pervasive melancholy, it is difficult to tear yourself away from Latif and his (mis)adventures. Pity gives way to genuine affection and before you know it, you want Latif to succeed, in whatever small ways he can, in spite of the cruel blows that life has dealt him.
Salim’s refusal to grant a chance at redemption to his protagonist is what has made a star out of a young man who dwells in the background. The Bellboy boasts of cinematic grandeur – the setting is superb and surreal, the characters shifty yet pitiful, and a climax that despite its predictability makes you hope against hope that the young boy is spared the fate that is meted out to nameless millions. All the odds are stacked against the bellboy and yet you can’t stop turning the pages of a story that you know ends in a young boy’s damnation – it is in this inability to put the book down, that the reader realises they have been irrevocably enthralled by Salim’s masterly storytelling.
The Bellboy, Anees Salim, Penguin.