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A
new novel about an Indo-Canadian gangster is creating waves. Ranj Dhaliwal’s debut novel Daaku, to be launched looks at the life of Ruby Pandher, a self-described
daaku.
Ruby learns young that might, in the form of his drunken father’s fists, is right and that money is easier to steal than earn. Ruby’s small-time scams reveal a knack for leadership and after his first stint in youth detention, Indo-Canadian drug dealers started to use his services. In the process, he also gets involved in gang-wars while running a jailhouse smuggling ring.
Ruby’s pals from Surrey in the province of British Columbia, which has a large Indo-Canadian population, too become drug lords, thieves and murderers in western Canada. “Surrounded by Punjabi terrorists, bikers and Indo-Canadian gangsters, Ruby is drawn like a moth to the glamour of power, money, and drugs. He’ll do anything to get to the top,” according to the website’s gist of the novel. Daaku, which took five years for Dhaliwal to write, is a story of betrayal, cold-blooded murder and the rise and eventual fall of one gangster. According to reports, the novel has sparked clashes of opinion among the Indo-Canadian community in Surrey. However, the first-time author has defended his work, saying that it is not a textbook. “When I was writing it, I wasn’t thinking about all that stuff. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh I’m going to get in trouble by saying that,’ or ‘I’m going to have people talking about this one.” It was the story that was going on in my mind,” he told the Now newspaper. In a separate interview to CBC News, he said that Daaku is a fictionalised account of one young man’s life in the world of Indo-Canadian gangs, based on facts. He said that some of his friends growing up in Surrey were used by Sikh religious leaders to rough up their opponents in the elections. “This is the stuff I’ve heard about, where I’ve had friends that are saying, ‘I had to go and beat somebody up for one of the older guys’,” CBC News quoted him as saying. He said that he is breaking a code of silence in Surrey’s Indo-Canadian community because he had friends killed in gang warfare and because he believed many Indo-Canadian parents were unaware of their children’s true lives. A first generation Indo-Canadian, Dhaliwal was born in Vancouver in 1976. He devotes his spare time to organisations that deal with at-risk Indo-Canadian youth.
— IANS
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