DASYU Ranjan Series

During my growing up days in Bhubaneswar, there used to be a series of cheap, yet popular and widely circulated Odia detective novels. The most famous amongst them was the DASYU RANJAN (Dacoit Ranjan) series.

 

The novels would invariably start like " RAATI ADHA. CUTTACK RAJA RASTA RE TEERA BEGA RE CHHOOTI CHALICHI KALA RANGARA AUSTIN CAR", meaning, "it's midnight. On the highway of Cuttack travels an Austin car at the speed of an arrow." I have never seen an Austin car in my life. But I can assure you, driving a car, Austin or otherwise in Cuttack at arrow speed would earn a safe ticket to heaven.

 

The occupant would be no one but the legendary Dasyu Ranjan. He stealthily enters Zamindaar ( Feudal lord ) Roy Choudhary's palace, where a grand party is going on. Liquor flows like river Mahanadi during monsoon. Dasyu Ranjan dramatically enters into the scene and manages to steal the diamond necklace of Zamindaar's ALIYALI KANYA  ( daddy's darling daughter) and escapes before his act is discovered.

 

Ranjan was more like an anti-hero, a Dacoit with a golden heart. He along with SAATHI (accomplish) Ratan, would always give a slip to the legendary Odia Detective, the chain smoking Inspector Bijay Babu who perpetually trails Ranjan. Bijay Babu keeps on smoking cigarettes one after another, ignoring cups of tea going cold. His persuit also goes cold, yet unable to fathom the mystery of Ranjan. At end, when the real villain chains Bijay Babu to feed him to his pet Octopus, Dacoit Ranjan comes to rescue. Bijay Babu exclaims, ASCHARYA (Wonder), is he really a DASYU ( Dacoit) or DEVTA  (God). This is invariably the last sentence of the novel.

 

Those DASYU Ranjan series novels were written by one Pramod Kishore Panda. Most of them were repetitive, with minor changes in plots. They usually came with names like SAGARA PATHE  (onwards sea) RANJAN, PEKING  (as Beijing was called then, China was still a 3rd world country) ABHIMUKHE  (towards) RANJAN, MOSCOW (during height of Cold War Moscow was perceived as an Indian friendly Paradise) RE RANJAN (Ranjan in Moscow ) and myriads gluts of smut.

Nevertheless, they sold like hot cakes. I cherished reading those junk. Such were the popularity of those detective novels, in our village library those were the only books borrowed, read and often stolen. The rest of the books were conveniently ignored. Not sure if those books, part of SAATHI (Friendly) pocket books, which can fit into one's pocket, are still available.