NEW DELHI, March 4: As protests raged against his visit to the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Friday, US President George Bush got a whiff of relief when he was accosted by an Indian woman agriculturist who planted a kiss on the dazed man’s cheek, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.

As Mr Bush did the rounds of Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricul-tural University in Hyderabad on his last day in India, ‘a field assistant suddenly drew close to him, pulled him by the hand and planted a kiss on his cheek’, the report said.

For a split second, the most powerful man in the world was stunned. The next moment he gracefully pulled himself away from K. Padmavathi and started patting her on her shoulders.

“The President was so patient with us that he even bent down to catch what I was saying,” gushed Ms Padmavathi, who had vigorously shaken hands with him before going for the cheek.

“I was just charmed by the handsome looks of the tall President who had come all the way from America just to listen to our narration on soil-testing methods,” she said later, explaining the peck was a spur-of-the-moment thing.

The president mixed freely with several agriculture staff in the university. He watched a programme of folk dances, listened intently to a presentation on the latest trends in agriculture and took a good look at handicrafts made by women’s self-help groups.

“Good show. Nice work. Cool. Keep it up,” he is believed to have told the excited flock, The Telegraph said.