On the early morning train from Kolkata, Monojit Dutta arranged for a large bundle of balloons to be waiting for him when he arrived at the station at Canning, a town in West Bengal on the banks of the River Matla. It was a Sunday.

“I usually visit new places on Sundays to explore and take photographs, and, on this day, annual school exams had just finished,” he says. “I came across lots of local children playing in a field, shared out the balloons and asked three of them to run and jump. I didn’t guide their movements beyond that, and their energy and expressions are all natural.”

Afterwards, Dutta sat by the river to study the shots he had taken. “The boys were around nine or 10, and were running in a circle, jumping and chasing each other. One of them was a bit less energetic, or maybe tired, so he fell slightly behind. I captured the moment as it happened,” Dutta says. “Later on, I realised that it had created a nice balance in the frame, with two boys on the left jumping in the air and one on the right still on the ground.”

He made some basic edits on his phone, including minor tweaks to the saturation and contrast. “I tried to showcase a life where children can play freely under the open sky,” he says. “And I wanted to show the joy of Sundays.”