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In a photograph by Jaisingh Nageswaran, a boy is swimming in a river His arm lunges forward, hanging mid-air In another image, a young boy’s face is turned towards the sky He leans back against the water, sunlight cast on his face, a small victory being celebrated behind tightly shut eyes These are photos from DOWN BY THE RIVER: MULLAI PERIYAR (2020-21), a series Jaisingh shot on his iPhone while in a national COVD-19 lockdown in India During this time Jaisingh has been photographing his home in Vadipatti, a town in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu, the river Mullai Periyar which cuts right through it, and the people who live and work there Jaisingh’s photos are full of sounds The music of the Mullai Periyar leaks in: the naked laughter of adolescent boys, grandmothers calling names as if they were songs, watery giggles over fish caught in open palms, loud leaps into the river by small children, women washing clothes by the steps ‘The whole village comes to the river,’ Jaisingh told me when we spoke last December The community of washermen and women carry clothes to clean on the steps of the river Agricultural and daily wage labourers come with their cattle to bathe them Young boys with their grandmothers learn to swim by throwing coins in the river and diving in to look for them The Mullai Periyar is as accepting as it is revealing The washermen and women and the daily wage labourers come from Dalit and Other Backward Class (a term the Constitution of India uses to categorise socially disadvantaged castes) Occupations in India are neither accidental nor determined by choice, but dictated by caste, yet Jaisingh refuses to let caste be the only narrative ‘I want to capture the happiness of my people by our river,’ he says   Jaisingh is the grandson of Ponnuthai, the first Dalit woman in the village to become a