Flood Me, I'll Be Here

Resilience, climate adaptation, and coexistence with the Brahmaputra and its floodplain shape life on Majuli amid accelerating environmental change.

“Flood Me, I’ll Be Here” is a long-term photographic exploration of Majuli, the world’s largest river island in Northeast India, which is gradually shrinking due to erosion, flooding, and the shifting course of the Brahmaputra River. For centuries, the river’s powerful flow has shaped the island’s geography, history, and cultural identity, defining both territory and daily life.

Rather than just focusing on catastrophe, the project offers an intimate portrait of communities shaped by spiritual continuity, cultural memory, and a long-standing coexistence with water. Life on Majuli follows a cyclical rhythm governed by monsoons and the river’s unpredictability, where adaptation has long been part of survival.

In recent decades, this balance has come under increasing pressure. The island has lost nearly two-thirds of its land to erosion, forcing thousands of families to relocate. Floods are becoming more frequent and intense, monsoon patterns are less predictable, and new infrastructure—bridges, embankments, and sandbag barriers—is altering the river’s ecosystem and traditional ways of life.

Since 2020, this work has documented communities living on the island’s floodplains, where homes, crops, and livelihoods remain constantly exposed to the river’s movements. While vulnerability is increasing, daily life reveals persistence rather than collapse. The islanders’ relationship with the River Brahmaputra and its anabranches is not only about control but also about adaptation—knowing when to move, rebuild, or endure. Through this fragile yet enduring coexistence, the project presents resilience not as resistance to nature, but as a complex way of living with it amid accelerating climate change.

Photographs were taken between 2020—2025.