It is 1931 and a wealthy young Englishman who has failed to distinguish himself at school is sent off by his parents to Munich to learn German. It is 1931 and a wealthy young Englishman who has failed to distinguish himself at school is sent off by his parents to Munich to learn German. He begins his German sojourn by getting himself some wheels and going for a spin,taking as guide his 60-year-old host. John will later recall that he was driving very carefully,but it is a matter of record that a pedestrian is knocked down. The pedestrian is not really injured,amiably shakes hands with John and is soon on his way. Did you recognise him,Johns host asks him. He did not. Well,he is a politician with a party and he talks a lot. His name is Adolf Hitler. As satirist Craig Brown retells it in an intriguing book called Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings,Scott-Ellis will spend much of his later life telling folks,For a few seconds,perhaps,I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. He was only shaken up,but had I killed him,it would have changed the history of the world. It does not fall upon most people to have a shot at changing the course of history in the span of a short encounter but many a meeting can leave a lasting imprint on one or both of the lives that crossed. Essentially,this is what Brown does he gives a summary of the lives of two people refracted through a meeting and draws those lives in a compact pattern by hopping along from a meeting between A and B to one between B and C,further to C and D,so on. Some are scheduled encounters,some are chance run-ins,and some are almost fleeting. They do not necessarily move along chronologically. But each encounter is written in exactly 1,001 words. These numbers are highlighted baldly,and therefore boastingly,in an accompanying authors note,as too the contention that everything in (the book) is documented. So,by way of example,the next chapter has Scott-Ellis spending quality time with Rudyard Kipling in the summer of 1923. And in the next,Kipling (then 23) is in the US in 1889,determined to meet his hero Mark Twain (then 53). Upon their meeting,Kipling is aflutter: I was shaking his hand. I was smoking his cigar,and I was hearing him talk this man I had learned to love and admire 14,000 miles away. Years later,Twain will worship Kipling,rereading Kim and noting,I am not acquainted with my own books,but I know Kiplings books. By the next chapter,it is February 1909,and Helen Keller is calling on Twain so in three steps,we have moved from Hitler to Keller,and so it will go to Martha Graham,then Madonna,then Michael Jackson and Nancy Reagan. There will be Marilyn Monroe asking Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home for her and Arthur Miller the house doesnt materialise. And then there is Monroe invited to meet Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to Hollywood in 1959,coached by Natalie Wood to deliver a line in Russian: We the workers of Twentieth Century Fox rejoice that you have come to visit our studio and country. Eventually,through encounters with Frank Sinatra,HG Wells,Josef Stalin,Winston Churchill,Marcel Proust,Roald Dahl,Isadora Duncan amongst so many others we will loop back to Hitler via his meeting with Wallis Simpson in October 1937. She would have made a good queen, he will say about the Duchess of Windsor. The stories of our lives,Brown appears to say,reveal themselves to be more interesting in each retelling,if only we would re-imagine the way in which we choose to encapsulate them. Or perhaps his point is more subversive: find me a pattern for a narrative,he may well contend,and I will fit the stories of so many remarkable lives into that grid. Either way,the result is fascinating. mini.kapoor@expressindia.com
