Srinath Rao’s ‘Meow Meow’ review: A real-life crime saga, stranger than fiction
Live MintYou might mistake the synthetic stimulant mephedrone for salt, MSG or talcum powder. Described as a “drug queen”, Shashikala “Baby” Patankar, Kalokhe’s paramour and business partner, was the one who had ratted him out. Crime reporter Srinath Rao’s debut non-fiction book, Meow Meow: The Incredible True Story Of Baby Patankar, is a meticulously reconstructed account of this crime saga through legal documents and interviews with the police, witnesses, and Baby herself. In one chapter, he compellingly lays out the geography of inequity, painting a picture of the gentrification of Mumbai around an increasingly burgeoning slum: “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 enviously. When he describes a police official who imitates a friend who was on Meow Meow, he says, “He trained a deathly Amrish Puri glare at me and hung his jaw limp loose like jelly melting in the sun.” A chapter devoted to the episode where Baby tipped off the police about the drug stockpile at Kalokhe’s house while travelling out of the city to keep an eye on him, is nail-biting.
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