Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of Madam Commissioner by Meeran Chadha Borwankar

I began Madam Commissioner expecting a memoir about power, postings, and protocol. What I did not expect was how quietly it would sit with me afterward — like the weight of a khaki uniform folded neatly on a chair, still warm from long use. This is not a book that shouts. It stands. Firmly. And asks you, without drama, to look at what integrity costs.

Meeran Chadha Borwankar’s life has been written about often in headlines, but here it arrives stripped of spectacle. From the very first pages, there is a sense of a woman walking into spaces that were never designed for her and refusing to apologize for existing there. The fact that she was the only woman in her IPS batch of 1981 is not presented as trivia or triumphalism; it is simply the weather she had to walk through. And she describes that weather — the physical exhaustion, the psychological isolation, the subtle humiliations — with a prose that is clean, unornamented, and deeply confident in its own restraint.

What struck me most in the narrative is her attention to people who would normally be footnotes in an officer’s life. A woman attendant at the academy. A demanding outdoor trainer. Subordinates who stood by her in difficult investigations. These moments soften the authority of the narrative without weakening it. They reveal a character shaped as much by observation and gratitude as by command. The memoir becomes, in this way, not only a record of cases but a reflection on how character is formed when nobody is watching.

The book’s pacing mirrors the rhythms of policing itself — long stretches of procedural grind punctuated by sudden moral crises. Sensational cases appear, but they are never sensationalized. Whether dealing with sexual exploitation, communal tension, organized crime, or prison administration, Borwankar consistently pulls the reader away from voyeurism and toward consequence. The Jalgaon sex scandal chapter, in particular, lingers not because of its horror but because of the clarity with which she draws lessons about power, silence, and institutional failure. You feel the slow churn of the system, the resistance to truth, and the personal toll of insisting that the law must mean something beyond paper.

Her prose remains remarkably even when the subject matter is not. There is no bitterness, though there is unmistakable disappointment — especially when she writes about political interference, withdrawn cases, and the way honest officers are quietly punished for being “too straight.” The emotional impact here is subtle but cumulative. You sense the fatigue of swimming against the current for decades, and yet there is no self-pity. The narrative voice never asks for sympathy; it earns respect.

One of the most unsettling reflections comes from her observations about how institutions respond when women officers speak up about misconduct. The discomfort of colleagues. The convenient labelling of the woman as “difficult.” These passages are written without rhetoric, which somehow makes them more powerful. They read less like accusation and more like documentation — evidence placed gently but firmly on the table.

Structurally, the book benefits from short, focused chapters that allow the reader to pause, reflect, and return without losing momentum. Each chapter feels like a window into a particular phase of transformation — professional, ethical, or personal. There are moments of pride, certainly, but also moments of loss: coveted postings that never came, battles fought at personal cost, recognition that arrived late or sideways. The memoir understands that impact is not always rewarded in real time.

If there is a weakness, it may be that readers looking for dramatic introspection or lyrical flourish might find the tone almost too disciplined. But that discipline is itself the point. This is a life lived in service to process, fairness, and restraint. Excess would have felt dishonest.

What stays with me most is an image near the end: a senior officer capable of overseeing executions and, in another moment, helping the child of a condemned man secure something as ordinary as a passport. That juxtaposition captures the book’s deepest theme — that justice without humanity becomes brutality, and humanity without courage becomes sentimentality. Borwankar walks that narrow line with rare steadiness.

Madam Commissioner is not only for readers interested in policing or bureaucracy. It is for anyone grappling with the question of how to remain decent inside flawed systems. Read it slowly. Perhaps one chapter at a time. Let it unsettle you a little. And when you close the book, notice the quiet resolve it leaves behind — the kind that does not demand applause, only continuity.

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