5 august 2019 http://www.openthemagazine.com 3
contents
5 august 2019
52
FaCINg uP tO tHE FORBIDDEN
The novelist Nemat Sadat talks
about the travails of coming out as
a gay man in Afghanistan
By Bhavya Dore
NOt PEOPLE LIKE us
Family at work
By Rajeev Masand
66
48
DIVIDED WE FaLL
What’s it like being a Muslim in today’s
India? Salman Khurshid takes a personal
journey with a political message
By Mani Shankar Aiyar
44
tIME WILL tELL
As India’s fascination for luxury watches
grows, aficionados expand their tastes
to include independent watchmakers, all
the way from Glashütte to Jaipur
By Kaveree Bamzai
PROsE & POLItICs
Opium for the masses
By Siddharth Singh
56
CRaFtIN g t HE COVENaNt
SG Vasudev’s retrospective reveals the joyous
communion of man, woman and nature
By Shikha Kumar
58
LOCOMOtIF
Being Boris
By S Prasannarajan
5 40
DEVIL’s OWN COuNtRY
The Kerala government wants to stop the state’s
obsession with the occult with a law against
superstition. Can black magic be contained?
By Shahina KK
22
RaHuL’s WaR
ON tHE CONgREss
Now that Rahul Gandhi has
walked away, the Congress’
karmic decrepitude has cast
its dysfunctional spell
on its leaders
By Harish Khare
INDRaPRastHa
By Virendra Kapoor
6
MuMBaI NOtEBOOK
By Anil Dharker
7
Cover by
Saurabh Singh
35
tHE INEVItaBLE END
The real story in
Karnataka is not the fall
of the Congress-JD(S)
government but the
impending demise of the
Congress itself in the state
By V Shoba
22
38
tHE BattLE FOR tuRF
Pro-Pakistan terror groups
in Kashmir are at war
with pan-Islamic jihadi
groups. Security agencies
don’t know which way
it will go
By Rahul Pandita
FORM & REFORM
Measures for measurement
By Bibek Debroy
12
tHE RaCHEL PaPERs
The sporting spirit
By Rachel Dwyer
14
OPEN EssaY
Boris Johnson: The one and many
By Roderick Matthews
16
30
HOW tHE CONgREss
LOst tHE WaR OF IDEas
Rahul Gandhi did not have
a counter argument in the
face of Force Modi
By PR Ramesh
16
35 44