Bhubaneswar, July 19 :     Born to fame and glamour, he could handle them. Always in the media glare, he could come to terms with it. Bearer of a legacy but very much his own man, there was but one thing that John F. Kennedy Jr could never deal with: his nickname John John. ?Whenever someone called him John John, he would ask him to call him John. He simply did not like the nickname,? says his friend Naveen Patnaik, remembering JFK Jr, who is presumed dead along with his wife and her sister in a plane crash off Martha?s Vineyard. The nickname was said to be created by a reporter who misheard a conversation. Union steel and mines minister Patnaik, who today wrote to JFK Jr?s sister and her husband, says: ?It is really sad that he should go this way.? Patnaik knew JFK Jr?s mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for a long time. He remembers first meeting JFK Jr at a south Indian restaurant in Delhi in 1983. ?I had gone there to meet Jackie, but there he was, sitting with her in a darkened corner inside the vegetarian restaurant.? At the time, JFK Jr was only 22 and researching into agriculture. ?Relaxed? and ?without airs? was how the young man came across. Patnaik got to know JFK Jr better that winter when he accompanied mother and son on a three-week trip to Lucknow, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Hyderabad. Patnaik had been commissioned by Jackie ? then a senior editor with US-based Doubleday publishers ? to do a book on Indian culture and history. ?He was always polite, but fiercely independent,? is how Patnaik remembers the person who was once described by People magazine as ?the sexiest man alive?. Jacqueline and JFK Jr were captivated by Rajasthan. In Lucknow, JFK Jr often rented a bicycle and rode around the city. ?He especially liked to go to the market to get a feel of the place,? Patnaik says. JFK Jr loved sports ? sea kayaking, rafting, softball and touch football ? and probably had the natural sportsman?s instinctive grasp of a new game. One day in Jaipur, he spotted a few children flying kites. ?Soon, his kite was soaring high up in the sky. It was amazing how quickly he had got the hang of it,? Patnaik remembers. JFK Jr was hugely popular in the US, something Patnaik found out in New York when his book A Second Paradise was released in 1985. ?It was raining when we stepped out of New York Public Library. A crowd was waiting outside, braving the rain. They went crazy when they saw him and started chanting his famous nickname. We practically ran away.? In 1993, Patnaik remembers, JFK Jr turned up late for a party thrown by Jacqueline in her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. A leaking pen had smudged his trousers and forced him to change. ?I had to return to change. How can I come to my mother?s party like that?? he asked. Patnaik says Jackie and JFK Jr both loved India. ?When Jackie died of cancer in 1994, her coffin was brought to her apartment draped in a sari as she had wished,? he said. JFK Jr handled with dignity and efficiency the global media attention. Sombre and poised just hours after being by her bedside as she died, he spoke to reporters outside. Patnaik recounts he met JFK Jr only a few times in New York after Jackie?s death. But he remembers how surprised JFK Jr was when he heard that Patnaik was joining politics. ?Naveen joining politics, I can?t believe this,? JFK Jr had told Patnaik?s sister, the New York-based writer Geeta Mehta.