Where is my 65 LAKHS??. Review on Paisanth Laakh Ki Dakaiti - Surendra Mohan Pathak

Today I completed one more Hindi novel, and probably the most famous novel of Surendra Mohan Pathak - 65 Laakh Ki Dakaiti, which is also translated into English as "The 65 Lakh Heist" by Sudarshan Purohit. The Hindi version was first published in 1977 and was translated in 2010. This book belongs to the most famous series of SMP - the Vimal Series, where the main character is a kind of anti-hero, named Sardar Surender Singh Sohal aka Vimal, who is not only famous as hunter of underworld gangsters but also famous is camouflaging his own identity. He is wanted in many states, but he is always on run, and is living with different names. Here in this book, he is living as a Driver named Ramesh Kumar Sharma. The book which I bought cost me Rs.80, published by Raja Pocket Books, and this book also has a short story at the end. The main novel goes on for 202 pages, and the short story named "Maut Ka Vilaap" took the remaining pages out of 283 pages. I completed this book in 5 days.

The story is like this - A highly talented tijori-breaker Mayaram Bawa wanted to perform his big and last act of breaking vault, and stealing money, and he has a plan in his mind, he want to break the vault of a bank named Bharat Bank, which is always guarded heavily. There are many guards, and they have fixed time and practices to guard the bank. But with the help of an inner guy Karnail Singh, and by paying him some Rs.90000, he got the timetable of guards and all other vital information. He has 3 more partners, the wire expert Karmchand, Gurandita, and Labh Singh 'Matar Paneer'. He need one more guy just because he had that much money to finance the robbery - Vimal aka Surender aka Ramesh. He also joined the team, and with the plan they attacked, and successfully able to loot Rs.65 lakhs from the bank vault. But while retrieving back, a big problem occurs, Guranditta falls from the ladder they used to enter bank, and he falls from the height of 50 m and died instantly. They ran from the place, but later on Mayaram killed his other two partners - Karmchand and Labh Singh brutally, and tried to kill Vimal. He double-crossed everybody. But Vimal is our hero, he not only survives but able to take the revenge from Mayaram. There are other characters too, who after knowing about the money is following Mayaram. But in the end no one get money, since the guy who hide the suuitcases is dead, and nobody else knew about the hiding place.

So, the story is as thin as wafer, but what I liked most is the presentation, the execution and the plan. This is what glued readers to the book till the end. The whole thinking, executing it, and I was reading it with all my interest, it was like wow, I was getting the feel of plan myself. Story didn't dragged, just goes on smoothly, and this thing I liked about SMP is that he did not waste pages, he just wrote as direct as he could. Like if I compare this book with my earlier read "Kubda" of Ved Prakash Sharma, I must say that VPS dragged too much and he tries to write long story stretching it to as much as he can, but SMP wrote simple plain. One more thing is a big positive here is not much direct dialogues are given, unlike his other books I read. The explanation of story is going on with dialogues placed at appropriate places, no extra dialogues are put. But I didnt like the ending of the book. It looked that SMP ended it abruptly, like leaving his readers in middle, nobody knows where is the money hidden. Maybe it is covered in any other book, or maybe in my book pages are not there, but it didnt seemed like any of these cases. although only @jmathur sir can clarify it. Rest, the book is good, and a total timepass.

The short story "Maut Ka Vilaap" is a simple and straight story about drug smuggler in disguise named Diki Khurana, and story starts when he killed his girlfriend, and a guy Dheeraj, who is also a painter stands against him to ensure justice been given to the girl who died. Nothing much of effort is there, but its okay to read few more pages. Overall the book is good, an interesting and easy read and total timepass, Buy it, I will say, my take 3.5/5.

GRuchirG.

Jai Raam Ji Ki :)