I know this is unprofessional, but halfway through the meeting I can’t help but divert my attention from Kiran Bedi’s words to reflect on the plight of her mobile phone. The miserable gadget was muffled by her deft fingers the moment she walked out of her study and into the drawing room. But through the 10-odd minutes that we’ve spoken, it’s been continually letting out those gagged, rebellious ‘whhngg’s, while convulsing furiously in an attempt to spring out of its owner’s iron fists. Someone, somewhere, is desperately trying to get in touch. And going by the sheer frequency of those futile electronic protests, one thing is quite clear. At 58, Kiran Bedi is more in demand than she ever was.

Ever since she put in her papers as an Indian Police Service (IPS) official late last year, thereby ending her 35-year-long association with law enforcement, Bedi has had her hands full. And it’s not just with engagements such as running with the Olympic torch, which she refused anyway.

“As a sportsperson, I would have loved to run,” she clarifies, thumbing the phone into silence once again. “Running with the Olympic torch could have made for great CV material. But it was too stifling. The entire phobia generated over the event was so absurd. You can’t run in fear, not when every bit of freedom associated with the spirit of sports has been snuffed.”

It might be the most recent development in her life, but the torch incident appears to symbolise a sort of quashing uberforce that Bedi has had to battle with through most of her career. Ironically, things didn’t quite begin that way. At age nine, her businessman father P.L. Peshawaria thrust a tennis racket into her hands, triggering Bedi’s quest for achievement. “My school’s motto was to strive to excel,” she says of her alma mater, the Sacred Heart Convent School in her hometown Amritsar. “At a very young age I had been moulded to stand out in whatever I did,” says Bedi, who won the Asian lawn tennis championship in Pune in 1972.

Her thirst for glory began to show when — after a two-year stint as a political science teacher in Amritsar’s Khalsa College for Women — she landed herself a job with the IPS in 1972. “It was again a desire to break barriers,” she says of her decision to join the police, becoming the country’s first woman IPS officer.

During the early Eighties, Bedi made quite a mark in traffic-snarled Delhi, towing away illegally parked cars. They called her Crane Bedi those days, for her iron-handed approach towards the city’s rule-flouting drivers. One day, she towed one of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s cars, citing a parking violation. Few in Delhi dared to break traffic rules after that great levelling incident — but, needless to say, the political bosses wouldn’t have been very happy with her.

An avid nature lover, practitioner of meditation and fitness freak (her days still start with a 90-minute workout), Bedi then began to focus on police reform. She cleaned up traffic in Goa, pioneered rehabilitation and modernisation programmes in Delhi’s Tihar Jail during her stint as inspector general (prisons), and picked up sundry honours and prizes — including the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award — for her efforts.

But Bedi, the senior-most officer in terms of years of experience, never reached the top of the force. She was superseded by a junior officer for the post of commissioner, Delhi, last year, a development that, many believe, prompted her to resign from the service. “There was too much of falsehood and hypocrisy,” she says. “Like they were talking of police reforms all the time, but when I wanted to work on it I was categorically told by the home secretary to not even refer to the issue. I realised I was losing valuable time. My resignation was a rebellion against hypocrisy.”

Bedi’s supporters have often said that she was sidelined because she was a woman in what was essentially a male force. “The dominant psyche in the forces is 100 per cent male,” she says. Her detractors in bureaucratic and administrative circles, on the other hand, have pointed fingers at her repeatedly, criticising her for being choosy about postings and her fondness for the media.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she nods. “But you see, we are in a service where space is hard to come by. Everybody is fighting to carve out his or her own space all the time. So anyone who succeeds in securing some space will always have critics. But that never stopped me from doing my job.”

Now that she’s quit, two years before time, she’ll soon have to vacate the lovely government bungalow off Talkatora Road in the heart of New Delhi where she currently resides. Where’s she headed once she’s out of here, I ask, catching a glimpse of the manicured, phlox-lined lawns outside — one of the many privileges that Bedi will have to leave behind.

“My rural centre,” she smiles. “We built it over the past few years, on whatever little land that we four sisters had, and decided to put together for the project. It’s right next to Gurgaon Jail. And that’s where I intend to run my panchayat training programme, children’s education courses, prison programmes and vocational training centres. I’m moving there in October,” she adds.

But would that mean retiring to a somewhat reclusive existence, out of city limits? Not in the least, Bedi snaps back. Top Cat, her radio show, will continue. A new awareness programme on TV called Aap ki Kacheri, featuring her in the form of an Agony Aunt resolving legal problems, is slated to go on air sometime in May or June. “And my two organisations, Navjyoti and India Vision Foundation, are most happy to have me take active part in their projects, now that I’m no longer with the police. The schedule ahead is going to be very, very tight,” she says.

So tight that she won’t have time to update her blog, which hasn’t been tended to since late 2006, or take personal care of her website — she’s one of the few civil servants to have a presence on the web. She says she’ll have time for reading, though. “It’s my primary pastime, other than writing,” she says, pointing to the four cupboards that stand around the room, stacked with books featuring everything and everyone from Gandhi, Sikhism, drug abuse and women’s development to moral boosters like Don’t Say Yes When You Want To Say No. A dozen-odd plaques and awards sit around on cupboard tops, collected through the chequered career she’s just left behind.

Bedi admits that there were dreams she harboured. “I was ready to sleep with my boots on to make Delhi an island of policing excellence,” she says. “But I am a very detached person. I can walk away from anything feeling nothing at all.”

But Bedi would have liked to have beefed up security on the streets of Delhi, with self-policing to check crime, cameras to zero in on errant drivers and so on. It’s just that the establishment had different plans. “But I’m sure others will come ahead in future and do what I couldn’t,” she sighs.

An SMS beeps in. This time, she looks down to read it. “Do collect a brochure of the new Safer India mission we’ve launched on your way out,” she says, her mind predictably on her next diary entry, as we rise from our seats. “It’s devoted to saving victims and making India a safer place. You might find it interesting.”

We exchange hasty pleasantries and Bedi proceeds towards her study. “Thank you for coming,” she smiles, and switches the phone off “silent”. It doesn’t waste a moment before ringing out freely. Like owner, like phone.