When John F. Kennedy Jr. Came to India

Courtesy of Diya Akbar John F. Kennedy Jr. with Diya Akbar, daughter of journalist M.J. Akbar, in Kolkata (then Calcutta), West Bengal in 1983.

India in 1983 was still in its infant stages of economic development; however, like today, it was a popular destination among Westerners with its marketable poverty, a lingering sense of spirituality, mysticism and a rich history.

Around 20 years after United States President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, his son, John F. Kennedy Jr., was ready to take on the world as a fresh 23-year-old history graduate from Brown University.  After finishing his education, he took a working year off in which he traveled to India to spend some time at Delhi University, where he researched topics of his personal interests like food production, health and education.

Having the fortunes, or misfortunes, of being attached to that famous American family name, Mr. Kennedy’s India trip was well designed to protect his identity through a collaborative effort by both Indian and American governments. In Delhi, instead of the American Embassy, Mr. Kennedy stayed at various places, from the dingy hotels of Pahar Ganj in the center of the city to the embassies of America’s allies.

At the same time, during Delhi’s winter season, Narendra Taneja, a journalist (who is also the father of this reporter), was a regular attendee of the city’s expat “wine-and-cheese” scene. At one such do at the Irish Embassy, he met a young man who was staying at the residence of the embassy’s second secretary, on the floor, in a sleeping bag.

“We just got talking, and I asked him where he was staying for his trip to Delhi, and he, with a smirk, pointed towards a corner of the room’s floor,” Mr. Taneja recalled.

“At that time, I had just shifted to Delhi and was staying in a professor’s house in .I.I.T,” the Indian Institute of Technology, he said. “The professor was traveling abroad for a few months and had lent me his big four-room house. I had a lot of space so I offered this guy a room, seeing that he was sleeping on the floor. He took up the offer, and after some time we took a tuk-tuk and left for my place.”

Mr. Taneja continued, “As we talked sitting in the living room and having instant noodles for dinner later that night, he brought out his diary and started to flip pages, showing his written musings about travels, family and so on. As he flipped through the pages, there were photos of him and his family. After quick glances, I started to realize that most of his pictures were with John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie Kennedy.

“I inquired about the photographs, and he replied, ‘Well, they are my parents,’ and that is when I realized I had John F. Kennedy Jr. living in my house. We had a very interesting chat for the rest of the evening about his life in America.”

The very next morning, an American Embassy official visited Mr. Taneja. He asked about Mr. Kennedy’s residence there and asked Mr. Taneja to make sure Mr. Kennedy’s presence was not leaked to the press or any other such institution.

But somehow a professor at I.I.T. discovered Mr. Kennedy’s identity and that he was living on campus. He called Mr. Taneja and asked whether Mr. Kennedy would like to come over for tea.

“I hesitated but agreed, telling him no one else should know about him staying here,” Mr. Taneja said.

When they reached his place, they found that the professor had also ended up inviting 20 other people in an attempt to show off his clout, that he knew John F. Kennedy’s son.

“We decided to stay even though I had asked him specifically not to let anyone know,” Mr. Taneja said. “After a while, the professor decided to ask John a question, and he asked, ‘So do you remember when your father was assassinated’ John, aghast, looked at me, and I stared at the professor in disbelief that this question was actually tabled to him.

“We left his house within minutes, and I apologized to him. ‘It’s O.K., it’s just that no one ever asks me that,’ he said.”

The next day, Mr. Taneja was preparing to go to a small town near Agra called Tundla, and Mr. Kennedy expressed his wish to join him as well. Upon being told that the travel included crowded trains in third-class compartments, he insisted that travel conditions did not bother him.

“He not once complained throughout his stay about anything. In fact, he even took up some typical Indian traits, such as haggling with the tuk-tuk driver over the price of the journey,” Mr. Taneja said.

They reached Tundla, a town in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where life was based around the Indian Railways, which operated a big train junction. After moving around for a while and meeting a host of locals, Mr. Kennedy was introduced to an Indian jyotishee, or a palm reader. He obliged when the palm reader offered to read his hand, and sat down with him.

After a few minutes, the palm reader looked at him, then at his hosts, and announced, “This man is the son of a king,” Mr. Taneja recalled.

This sudden statement took Mr. Kennedy back by surprise, Mr. Taneja said. As his identity was not to be divulged, no one said anything, but the palmist continued and asked him, “You have to be the son of a king. Who are you”

Later that day, struck by the palmist’s comments, Mr. Kennedy insisted on going back to him, but this time alone. He ended up spending two hours with the jyotishee, and what was discussed between the two remains between them.

“John spent a week with me before making his way to Varanasi and then on to Kolkata,” then called Calcutta, Mr. Taneja said. “Even until Varanasi he went in a third-class, non-air-conditioned train without a confirmed reservation, sharing the everyday experience of the common folk of India.”

Little is known about Mr. Kennedy’s trip to the spiritual city of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, but in Kolkata he was hosted by another journalist at the request of the Indian government. Upon arriving in the City of Joy, he stayed with M.J. Akbar and his family at their residence in the Chitralekha building.

“He stayed with us for a week,” said Mr. Akbar. “It was great fun having him. I remember that women used to line up around the staircase of the building as he ran up and down, bare bodied, for eight floors whenever there was no electricity and the lift would not work.

“He was well informed about U.S. politics, and we had some good debates on topics such as the era of imperialism in America and India,” he recalled.

While in Kolkata, Mr. Kennedy also visited Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity headquarters as part of his study, along with other institutions in the city.

“Even after he left, we stayed in touch,” said Mr. Taneja. “He sent me copies of his magazine, George, which he started in 1995.”

Mr. Kennedy died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999, along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. Prayers were offered in Kolkata by Mother Teresa’s order of nuns, remembering him not as a Kennedy, but as that down-to-earth, idealistic student.

Kabir Taneja is a freelance journalist, you can contact him on Twitter @KabirTaneja.