Book review | 'Meow Meow': Mumbai’s drug queen gets a new life in Srinath Rao’s incredible account

True crime never really went out of fashion, truth be told, but over the last five-six years we have witnessed an unprecedented boom in the genre, especially on streaming networks. Netflix is sitting on a gigantic stash of true-crime documentaries (including Indian ones, like the 2022 series Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi), Hulu has Only Murders in the Building, and everybody else has smaller slices of the pie. All of which makes true crime an attractive genre for writers — demand is at an all-time high, after all — but it also makes for a crowded marketplace. You have to be instantly recognisable as very good in order to distinguish yourself.

'Meow Meow: The Incredible True Story of Baby Patankar' by Srinath Rao (HarperCollins India, 328 pages, Rs 399)

Through an array of interviews (including a remarkable degree of access to Baby Patankar herself), newspaper reports, insider accounts and other archival material, Rao builds a thrilling narrative edifice. This is truly a three-dimensional view of the subject at hand — Rao talks to habitual mephedrone users to capture the texture of the drug itself (without ever getting high himself, a promise Rao makes to himself very early on). He talks to veteran cops and legal experts to explain how and why this area of narcotics control was so under-legislated. In general, the book’s cast is fascinating; white-collar drug users, street-level enforcers, crooked cops, wide-eyed youngsters; every character major or minor is fleshed out with a great deal of detail and dare I say it, genuine affection.

But the most impressive aspect of this book is Rao’s relentless grip on the larger picture — no event is viewed in isolation, just about everything is explained in specific socio-political contexts, as one would expect from an experienced journalist with their ear to the ground. Take this passage from Chapter Five, for example — Rao is talking about Siddharth Nagar, the Worli hilltop basti where Baby Patankar (allegedly) launched her drug empire. This is where the reader is while they’re being told about her origins, the poverty she grew up amid, plus the reasons why she hates the police (all of which is worthy of a Manmohan Desai film). See how astutely Rao describes the class gulf between this place and the rest of Worli.

“The view from the summit of Siddharth Nagar made it obvious to anyone living here that the rest of Worli had left it behind. While Worli built modern homes with roofs which didn’t leak  in the rains, bought cars and air-conditioners and took the family out for roast pork in oyster sauce and honey noodles served with vanilla ice cream at Flora, Siddharth Nagar, trapped like a fairy-tale hill inside a snow globe, watched on enviously.”

In addition to being a first-rate journalist, Rao is also a fine writer who is quite aware of the history of the genres he’s working in. For example, in one of the footnotes in Chapter One, he cites William Burroughs’ Junkie (1953), one of the finest novels ever written about drug usage. Elsewhere, he quotes from a 1909 account published in The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, a comic aside about the idiosyncrasy of Bombay street names at the time.

“One of his gems is the delectable title of a small lane near Girgaum, which used to rejoice in the distinct appellation of ‘Night Soil Depot Lane’. That is a nice savoury and suggestive address heading but more recently this gentleman has gone a step farther. Realising that the bumpy lane past the Pumping Station, which is the despair of motorists and an olfactory outrage on every passer-by, should not remain undistinguished, he has christened it ‘Worli Love Grove Pumping Station Road’.”

Meow Meow will almost certainly be adapted into a monstrously entertaining film or series in the years ahead. This book deserves to be on all the year-ender lists for 2023, a must-read for true crime fans and Mumbai diehards everywhere.