Daaku.

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Daaku, Vancouver’s Ranj Dhaliwal says right off the top, is the Punjabi word for outlaw. “A Daaku,” he says in the Foreword, “is a person who has no regard for life and is an outcast in society.” And, he adds, “the time has come to tell the tale of the Daaku in our modern society.”

Dhaliwal’s fictional Daaku is Rupinder Singh Pandher. Right from the start he drops the ethnic moniker and is known to friend and foe alike as “Ruby.” The story moves rapidly along as Ruby advances from shoplifting as a schoolboy to grand theft auto, armed robbery, drug dealing, and murder. Dhaliwal’s purpose is to show how Daakus, once they have “joined this life,” will leave with “nothing except [their] sins.”

Dhaliwal sets his novel in Surrey, a bedroom community of Vancouver which has a large Indo-Canadian population. In recent years there have been targeted murders and gangland wars in which this population is more than represented. Dhaliwal hopes that, by writing his novel, young Indo-Canadians will see that there are better lives to choose than that of a Daaku.