Busy applying make-up, Jacqueline kept Nehru waiting: Mansingh

NEW DELHI: Former US President John F Kennedy's wife Jacqueline had once kept Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru waiting at the airport, as she was busy applying make-up.

"Jackie Kennedy kept Nehru and his wife waiting at the airport as she was applying her make-up," former foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh said at a function here recently.

Jackie, as Jacqueline preferred to be called, was the First Lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963 and was known for her fashionable dressing.

In 1962, she came to India on a solo goodwill tour where she also met Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi.

"Though it was not a protocol but Nehru and his wife had still gone to the airport to receive her," Mansingh later told.

She was so impressed by the Taj Mahal during a visit there that she decided to return to see the 17th century monument of love at night.

Equally popular as her husband on their foreign visits, Jackie as particularly welcomed by the French, making President Kennedy to quip at a state dinner there: "I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself...I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris and I have enjoyed it."