I Failed to See Jacqueline Kennedy

In 1964, when I was working at the Indian Consulate, one of my friends came to our section and said that Jacqueline Kennedy was at a small gallery nearby. Hardly 30 or 40 people were there to see her. From the Consulate many workers went running to see her, but I did not go. Why? I had the highest admiration for her, but I disliked those drawings. I had seen them before and I thought they were silly, so I did not go. If she had been somewhere else, I would have gone.

Now I laugh. How easily I could have seen her at that gallery the way my colleagues did. I lost my opportunity.

[Source: "I Failed to See Jacqueline Kennedy" in Sri Chinmoy, My Consulate Years, Agni Press/Aum Publications, Jamaica, NY, 1996, p. 62.]