Indira Gandhi: Tough, no-nonsense work-style begin to once again show through

"If it were done, when 'tis done,
'twere well it were done quickly;
If the assassination could trammel up the consequence,
and catch with his surcease success." - Macbeth

It was a strange dismissal, partly cruel and partly sad. At 8 a.m. on March 19, Vidya Charan Shukla, the dapper Union civil supplies minister, one of Mrs Gandhi's prime hatchet men in the Emergency Cabinet, and a "rebel" of late, woke up to a call from the prime minister's house, barely two kilometres away from his new, spacious ministerial bungalow on Willingdon Crescent. In 15 minutes, Shukla's white Ambassador was speeding past Teen Murti towards Mrs Gandhi's house.