Arrangements

Every morning when I see the fruit sellers on the D'silva street at Dadar, I go crazy with the amount of things I imagine. Edging the pavement on both sides, they all sit arranging various kinds of fruits in their baskets. The round basket sets the meta-geometry for the arrangement of their fruits. They try to line the edge of the basket through the geometry of each fruit. I think it's like playing or solving a jigsaw puzzle. Although each piece of this puzzle seems same, their smaller variations need to be manipulated for a crisp arrangement all the time. This probably must be a meditating exercise in itself.

Can I, for the sake of generalizing these shapes of various vegetables and fruits, call them objects? Let us treat them as objects for my discussion here.

The various parameters that dictate the arrangements are the shape, size and the material of the object. The size that the arrangement can achieve is also dictated by the above three parameters.

most of these objects are spherical and therefore are stacked into concentric rings over each other. Each following ring in smaller than the previous to keep the centre of gravity within the basket. Objects like mangoes, apples, etc. are treated as eggs and one can find papier mache crates these days to accommodate them. Apples have the luxury of having styrofoam jackets also.

Probably the most careful handling amongst all the fruits would be that of the black berries (kala jamuns). In my childhood days, I have thrown a lot of stones at jamun trees to have the pleasurable fruit. Jamuns are very delicate and much of them are destroyed by crows and rodents. They shake them off the trees, and the fruit is destroyed due to the impact of the fall. Ripe jamuns are very delicate. And one can see with how much care the vendors treat it. It must also be a very delicate process to pluck them off the tree such that we can enjoy the beauty of the smooth skin of the fruit with our tongues! The vendors carry and arrange each fruit with so much care...like a jewel. Further, I am fascinated by their arrangements.

Depending on the size of the fruit, the arrangements look like fort walls, pyramids, stone walls, etc. I enjoy looking at these compositions and keep wondering if these can be used a building blocks! Even otherwise, they look beautifully composed objects. The order is functional, completely.  Probably the most interesting arrangements are those of flatter objects like leaves, of different plants. The colocasia, or the lotus or beetle leaves. They actually give more cues for arrangement of objects. The dynamic shapes that their configuration eventually takes is worth watching. They are like giving an array command to a shape. Also like scripting. One module multiplied and arranged just by displacing its position.

Forms, surfaces, voids - all of them create beautifully. I wonder if this craft of arrangement can be pulled into some kind of knowledge? Meanwhile, they remain interesting engagements.