>> We have been admirers of her feisty mother poet, documentary filmmaker and patron of the arts Asha Sheth for over four decades, and Ketaki Sheth has been a friend and contemporary for as long. But nothing prepared us for the superb book of photographs that she has published, and is releasing today. Titled ‘A Certain Grace: The Sidi, Indians of African Descent’, and published by Photoink, the book is an astonishing work of one India’s finest (and most under-recognised) contemporary photographers. “It all started on a family visit to Gir in 2004 when we drove through a Sidi settlement, Sirwan, in the middle of the Gir, given to them by the Nawab of Junagadh in recognition of their services and loyalty,” says the photographer who started taking pictures of the community in 2005.

“My first impression on the first day I entered Jambur, a Sidi village, was that it looked like a dusty film set. Seated at the entrance of the village and by the chai-beedi stall were four Sidi young men in tees and baseball caps playing a mean game of carrom. If looks could kill I would be dead as I was an obvious outsider.