Newsletter November 2015

There is what we write, and there is everything else. November was already announced as a month of silence, at least as far as Samvriti would be concerned. Leaving the website for another exercise in “Samvriti” — about, and ultimately for the Samvriti of the Buddhists, Samvriti Satya, indirectly and in disguise, in a text presented within the Forum Transcultural Encounters “Differences” held by the Foundation FIND in Zagarolo, Italy. What we write, what we share, and what we don’t. Or just what is waiting, perhaps, for the better time, the opportune moment when the publication will actually find its readers. Samvriti was, would be, or had to be, at least initially, a place for my past reflections, recipient and capitaliser of all the lines written across degrees and projects. Always preparatory, they have been calling for newer and more relevant pieces, written since the launching of this platform, and all those which remain written-to-be. This partial selection constitutes a multiple introduction to a thought in the making. But this was before November 2015. The brief fortnight, simple promise of a pleasant break away from Delhi’s restless corners, left me torn. Returning to India’s capital, finally, but with scares more than one. Back in Paris, resting comfortably, literally opposite one of France’s greatest monuments, Pompidou, another giant of culture left my world. René Girard, last umbilical cord as I had escaped to India’s cosmos some seven years ago, and the first to depart, now, as I finally return to Europe, in body and even in mind. Last and long-awaited moments of glory for him, as I saw several of the French media I so long loathed, finally pronouncing the name of he who was once for me nothing short of an exception in meaningfulness. Time has passed since, the interest too, but the self of another time is always ready to return, just for a few instants, just to remind that it never is really gone. But it is when events hit even harder, that silence knocks at the door and affirms itself as the only solid response. The attacks of Paris, just one week later, left me in a state quite distinct from what the Charlie Hebdo killings had grown in me earlier this year. Beyond the shock, the surprise and the remaining nuances always to recall for all sides of the equation, the surfacing of the present at times takes you away from thought and projections, only to recall the imminence of history’s making. Moment of crisis, of krinein: moment of catastrophe, moment of the great decisions. Personally too, a couple of krinein found their way to me, to us, just to underline that no one could escape, in the most intimate of engagements and implications, this participation we all share to the larger pictures of our reality. Moment of decision, undeniably, but not necessarily of action, of positivity, of expression. Silence, too, can be a decision. Literal silence, on some topics, moderate silence, ambitions of a personal ethics, perhaps, and an indirect, or temporary silence, as one finds his way back to study. Reading — writing otherwise, writing elsewhere, letting oneself be written, when the temptation of writing more sounds precisely as the thing to avoid. Remain nonetheless the remants, les restes, leftovers, the archive, essays from a time when writing was not quite, yet, a risk:

Samvriti, Newsletter  November 2015.

Samuel