At her office in New Delhi’s Shastri Bhavan, women and child development minister Renuka Chowdhury is facing a gaggle of television cameras. “Has the entire system failed? Have we all become blind, deaf and dumb,” she asks, kohl-lined eyes flashing. She’s worked up over the story of a 10-year-old Delhi schoolboy who was sodomised by three school officials. The parents landed up at her office the day before, after running from pillar to post to get justice.

The office is full of little statues and figures of clowns and children — children balancing on a log, playing leapfrog, relaxing in a garden. They’ve been picked up on her travels abroad and from Delhi’s crowded Ghaffar Market. “I represent children. I wanted this office to reflect this. Have you heard the sound of children laughing? It’s a silvery sound.”

She clearly bonds with children and it goes beyond writing stories for them, a hobby honed when she used to make up tales for her two daughters, Poojitha and Tejaswini. At a function during a recent trip to Kashmir, a child strayed close to her while playing. The security men tried to stop him but Chowdhury called the child over, made him sit next to her, chatted with him and sent her additional private secretary to buy him a gift.

She’s not able to shake off the story of the schoolboy. “This is so scary,” she says as she comes to her desk, where a bowl of imlis nestles among official papers. “We keep thinking girls are vulnerable. See how boys are vulnerable.” She promptly sets up a four-member committee to inquire into the incident. Her officials are said to be miffed; they consider it a state government issue. But their minister isn’t exactly known to stick to the script.

Or be diplomatic. Who else would label, at a Cabinet meeting, a group of ministers “gender blind”? She laughs uproariously when asked if the story is true. Frank, fearless, sharp-tongued and in your face. And oodles of self-deprecatory humour, often about her ample girth — that’s quintessential Chowdhury.

As health and family welfare minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, she caused “a lot of eyebrows to disappear into hairlines” when she placed a map of India made of condoms on her wall. More recently, she had the same effect when she said that women cannot trust men or husbands and must keep condoms to protect themselves. Hate mail poured into her office and blogs called her a ‘man-hater’.

“Why would I be a man-hater just because we have questioned the authority of men,” she asks. She was, she explains, addressing a forum of HIV-positive women, most of whom had been infected by their husbands. “Women are more vulnerable to HIV biologically and physiologically. I told them you should look out for yourself.” She’s saddened by how the remarks were sensationalised, when there was an opportunity to create a heightened awareness of an issue.

“Have I said go and have free sex? I haven’t. I’ve said, please be careful, have safe sex. What’s wrong with that? Today we must stop looking at condoms merely as family planning tools. They must be used as health aids, much as we use a toothbrush for oral health.” And women must keep condoms with them. “A guy who’s drunk when coming home is obviously not going to go shopping for a condom. Let’s be realistic.” It’s difficult to get a word in edgeways when she starts speaking.

Anger is what brought Chowdhury, 53, into politics. She was just another 30-year-old housewife expecting her second child when the N.T. Rama Rao government in Andhra Pradesh was toppled in 1984. She was not an NTR fan, but the dismissal infuriated her. “I said, ‘What nonsense, how can people do this?’”

She walked out on to the street, went to see NTR, gathered people assembled there, jumped on top of a police jeep to give a speech and was arrested. The next day she was splashed across the papers as “an angry housewife”. She soon found herself in the thick of the movement that saw power being restored to NTR. Two years later, the Telugu Desam Party sent her to the Rajya Sabha, where her acerbic snubs to patronising male MPs had everybody reeling as much as her dusky, glamorous looks. She fell out with her mentor, NTR, and was expelled from the party for indiscipline in 1994. She joined forces with his son-in-law, N. Chandrababu Naidu, but was sidelined after differences cropped up between them — and ended up joining the Congress in 1999.

The Domestic Violence Act her ministry pushed through first got her the man-hater label. The Act covers marital and non-marital relations and prescribes stiff penalties for violence and mental harassment. “Who’s going to lay wreaths on those women who have died because of domestic violence? What about all those women — powerful men’s wives and daughters-in-law — who ring me up secretly and say aapka naam kah ke hum zinda rehte hain (we use your name to stay alive)? They make me sound like Gabbar Singh.” She concedes that there may be deficiencies in the law and says her ministry does not have a closed mind on the issue. “But if men are protesting it is only because they are worried that the net is closing in on them.”

Her belligerent and no-nonsense style often overshadows her achievements and her emotional side. When an elderly woman MP admired an artefact in her room, Chowdhury asked her staff to pack it for her. Her stint at the tourism ministry is remembered less for the Atithi Devo Bhava campaign (where taxi and autorickshaw drivers were trained to be courteous) and more for the ban on Black Label in ITDC hotels because the wholesaler was charging ITDC more than the retail price. “I was 300 per cent right,” she exclaims.

There have been controversies galore — like beating up a policeman in Delhi for stopping her from driving on a route sanitised for the Prime Minister. “That was his version. I won the case 13 years later,” she says as she gives her story, in which there’s only a verbal altercation because the policeman abused her. “Why would a woman, unprovoked, go and hit someone? And if a middle-aged, overweight housewife can slap a policeman around, is he fit for the Prime Minister’s duty?”

And what of the letter she wrote to the defence minister pushing a Russian artillery gun? “I wrote that as an MP, not as a minister. Why are things being distorted?”

Why indeed is she dogged by controversy? “Because I was born on Friday the 13th,” she laughs. And also, she feels, because she is a woman, one who doesn’t conform to stereotype. A sari-clad woman, she complains, is expected to be a docile maami (aunt) or paati (grandmother). “If I drive a tractor, the urban lot gets hysterical. If I cook, my rural folk are surprised.”

She and her two sisters never grew up with stereotypes. “My parents never said leave this for the boys. There were no concessions because we were girls. We had to deliver on every front.” Her grandfather taught her to drive a tractor, her father made her change a flat tyre before letting her drive and told her to wear a helmet when she decided to ride a motorcycle. But she also modelled (for Max Factor) while in college. “That was many kilos ago,” she giggles. And she can embroider. “I find it very soothing. I can show you saris I have embroidered.”

She also blames the media for highlighting controversies. “We brought in the child commission for the first time. We’re talking about child rights. There’s no controversy there. But the press won’t write about that.”

She is supposed to attend the new President’s swearing-in, but is still talking. Her private secretary comes in and stands discreetly. I take my cue and leave, taking notes while walking to the door since she’s still talking. “Oh god, I’m late. And I have to change my sari. Or should I go in this,” she asks him, looking at her pista green Venkatagiri sari.

Does it matter? She’ll still remain the angry housewife at heart.