Daaku

By Dhaliwal Ranj and Ranj Dhaliwal

Book Overview

In the violent and ruthless world of Indo-Canadian gangs, Ruby Pandher is on his way up. A self-described daaku (Punjabi for outlaw), Ruby learns young that might, in the form of hid drunken father's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155420027X
• ISBN13: 9781554200276
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: New Star Books
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Daaku Book Review

[...] Synopsis: A story of betrayal, cold-blooded murder and the rise and eventual fall of one gangster, "Daaku" is a bullet-riddled grand tour of Indo-Canadian gangland. Daaku, in Punjabi, is another term for outlaw. A Daaku is a person who has no regard for life and is an outcast in society. This person believes that whatever he does is right, even though it is against all laws of his country. The Daaku can be found in every culture across the globe and has been around since the birth of mankind. The Daaku referred to in Ranj Dhaliwal's book is Ruby Pandher, an Indo-Canadian gangster. We meet Ruby when he is 7 years old or thereabouts and realize right away that he's a trouble-maker, he loves danger and seeing how far he can go before he's caught - it started with childish pranks like stealing a dime from his teacher's desk, pasting "kick me" signs on his teacher's chair, but he soon grows bored and moves on to arson "I wasn't a pyro, but I loved the power it(fire) had over items and their demise" to stealing cars and to beating up people for just giving him "the look" . Soon he graduates to carrying guns, selling cocaine, making collections for Indo-Canadian drug dealers, organizing a jailhouse smuggling ring whilst in prison ... eventually we see him betraying his closest friends and taking out anyone he perceives as a threat - 19-year old Ruby is determined to be the fiercest gangster in Western Canada. This is a hard book to read because of its very graphic subject matter. You hate Ruby's attitude to life, his blatant disregard for the law and for human life. You cringe at how easily he will pick a fight and beat another human being to pulp for the littlest grievances, and yet, when he talks about his "poor mom" and how he loves her daal roti (lentils and Indian bread) and how he demands that his friends and girlfriends respect her, or when he holds off having intimate relations with a girl who is coming onto him because he wants to lose his virginity with his girlfriend whom he loves, or even when he beats up a bully for calling his younger brother a "bun head" you realize that somewhere inside that hard exterior there is a heart and you want so much to believe he is more than a hardcore gangster. THe question I kept asking myself as I read the book was 'why'? Why do kids opt to live on the edge, when they could have stability and security? Why do they knowingly hurt the people that love and care for them? In Ruby's case, a hard drinking, brutal father who ruled his home with violence and a community that appears to respect maschismo and bravado, could have contributed to making Ruby the tough guy that he was, but at some point the lure of fast money, power and the adoration of the female sex as well as the admiration and fear of his peers was mainly instrumental in keeping him in the business. I was curious why Ranj Dhaliwal, a first-time author, would choose this subject (Indo-Canadian gang warfare) as a topic for his first novel f