What: Dial-a-Rambutan from Eemli.com, call 42153015, delivery from 10 am to 7 pm all over Mumbai, cash on delivery, Rs 550 for 1 kg.

Why: Red Koosh ball and rambutan = #sameguy. This sweet Malaysian fruit– spotted sometimes at a few Mumbai stores – can be sent over by Eemli.com within six hours of placing your order. This new fruit and veggie portal also home delivers other exotic produce like dragon fruit, avocados, white asparagus and bamboo shoot.

When: Hairy met scaly.

So you have an idea and a business plan and not too much money. You found a partner on Co-founder Dating. There’s a short skirt who hands you a memo and three interns you recruited at the Malhar rock concert. Where are you putting them all? In a closet below the stairs?

Bring them out, dust them off. We’ve found you a work space for cheap. SumHR in Andheri offers a community office space, along the lines of Bombay Connect in Bandra. They’re really a firm that designs an HR software management system, and are renting out their sublet space as independent work stations and office rooms, especially for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Freelance Armstrong

Sitting six floors above the Mumbai Darbar restaurant in Lokhandwala, the space is pleasant with citrus and lavender walls and fixtures include creative freelancers and web geeks. You can either get wooden work stations with soft boards and comfortable chairs, or spacious nine to ten-seater office rooms available for immediate possession, and a common skyline-overlooking a terrace lounge with bean bags and cane furniture, perfect for those who hate boardrooms. 
We’ll pretend we didn’t see those ‘Make it happen’ quotes on the walls, though. Waqar Azmi, SumHR’s founder, tells us that apart from a T-shirt design and a web-design company, a few shareholders have rented work stations too. Additional perks include a fully-stocked pantry, fridge, microwave, tea and coffee vending machine and water cooler.

Lone freelancer, don’t turn around and go scouting for Wi-Fi elsewhere. You can still rent a seat for Rs 5,000 a month, which includes internet charges, along with access to everything in the pantry and the common terrace balcony. If you’re a group of more than five people, SumHR will be willing to negotiate.

Ooh, you finally have a water cooler to stand around and gossip. Beats that leaky faucet at your last place!

Getting there: Annapurna, above Mumbai Darbar Hotel, near Adarsh Nagar Signal, off New Link Road, Oshiwara, Andheri (W), call 9833592727 for more details.

We’ve been reading Caitlin Moran’s absolutely hilarious feminist rant How To Be A Woman, and her chapter on fashion particularly resonated. “Before the high street,” she says, “women would make their own clothes, or see a dressmaker, so that everything we wore was an honest expression of who we were, and what we were comfortable with.” This doesn’t happen anymore she says, and we thought, “Challenge accepted!”

Behold our list of the handiest of Mumbai’s tailors - a sew good men, indeed!

Stylo Film Costumers: Bobby Cuts
Best known as the tailor who designed and stitched trousers and shirts for a twenty-something Rishi Kapoor in Bobby and Safari suits for Pran, Indru Khishnani and his family have been running this shop in Kala Ghoda for more than five decades now. Although he no longer works with the Bollywood fraternity, he can still make a pair of bell-bottomed trousers or a fully retro suit. He also does kurtas, suits, shirts and trousers for men and women. Lend him an eye, and he'll proudly show off the trophies he was awarded back in the day from various production houses. Next to Khyber restaurant, Kala Ghoda, call 9820099008, Rs 300 for a shirt, Rs 600 for a pair of trousers.

Pamela Wadia, Michelle Rodrigues: The White Wedding Dressmakers
Pamela, who works out of her home in Kalina, has been designing float-y gowns and poufy bridesmaid dresses for generations of Catholic families in Santracuz for the last 17 years. She’ll go fabric shopping with you and also suggest what sequins, buttons, stones and lace you can add. Place your order at least three to four months in advance, especially during wedding season (between October and April) to allow for trials and alterations.  Bridesmaid who looks like a pumpkin, speak now or forever hold your centre piece. To make an appointment call 9322277790, starts at Rs 10,000 for a wedding gown.

Michelle, who has a workshop in Bandra, specialises in wedding gowns with elaborate drapes, cuts and intricate embroidery work. She’s great at cloning so go with magazine clippings. To make an appointment call 9920087573, starts at Rs 15,000 for a wedding gown.

Waghela Brothers and Manish Jolly: The Sari Blouse Specialists
At Waghela Brothers, Kishore will be your bosom buddy, stitching sari blouses from scratch in a week. The soft spoken masterji does neat, perfectly fitted blouses. 12, Anju Shopping Centre, Tilak Road, Santacruz (W),  call 65716579, starts at Rs 750 for a blouse.

Take your own sample or choose from the many designs at this blouse-only tailor shop, which will yield a perfectly fitting blouse in one week. If you ask nicely, Mr Manish might make you a body-hugging petticoat as well. Opposite Shalimar Hotel, in the lane next to Millionaire, Kemps Corner, call 23892144  or 9820840987, start at Rs 1,100 for a blouse.

What: Sound Gecko – turn web articles into audio files, visit www.soundgecko.com, free.

Why: All those online long reads you’ve had to neglect at work, are having serious self-esteem issues. Now, you can send them to a happy place until it’s time to leave work. That place is Sound Gecko, a cool site that turns your web article link into an audio file and emails it to you within minutes. It works on all devices – they have an iPhone app too – and can be listened to on your home from the office. Close those weary eyes.

When: You want to achieve scale.

What: Gift a clay animation video by Apwig, call 9594099637, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , visit the website for details, Rs 9,000 for a video.

Why: Meet the new pottery bards, who will use your friends’ photographs as references, moulding their lives into mini clay animation videos. Apwig is run by two young graduates of film and art, who’ll help you conceptualise the idea and then deliver the film in two weeks, in a pretty DVD box that’s poised for gifting. Don’t expect Aardman Animation quality, but the execution is still cute. Also, ignore the tacky scrapbook-like videos that string together photos and sentimental songs, and focus solely on the claymation.

When: You need your action re-clayed.

Is your marriage in trouble? Well, we’re not going to convince you to stay together. You’ve probably thought it all through. Got a divorce attorney, yes? Now all you need is the purple room.

If you stop thinking about that Alibaug alimony home and focus for a second, we can explain. Two years ago, artist Shenaz Haveliwala started Sobo Hub, a rent-by-the-day conference room in Fort. Considering the number of cramped law offices in the neighbourhood, most business came from lawyers who were settling out of court, particularly divorce lawyers. It is not uncommon then, for Shenaz to see couples leave her 15-seater conference room in tears, sometimes of joy thanks to recent acquisition of fat alimony cheques. Meet and greet, indeed!

But in the recent past, Sobo Hub’s clientele has changed – freelancers looking to have meetings; NRIs visiting from out of town; art teachers who want to hold day-long workshops; even publications whose conference room have been vandalised. “We once hosted a Times of India workshop at the last minute, because their conference centre had been wrecked by political goons,” Shenaz says, adding that she has no idea how they found about Sobo Hub, situated on the third floor of an unassuming office building.

New Year’s Projections

So abandoning-spouse or not, you can still rent out Sobo Hub at Rs 2,500 for three hours or Rs 3,500 from 11 am to 6 pm. The room is pretty basic, equipped with a conference table and fifteen chairs, a projector on request, plus “plenty of peace and quiet”. There’s also free tea from Phillips Tea Center, masala dosas from Udipi and vada pav from A New Special, down the street.

The next time someone invites you to a purple room at Fort, just remember, it’s not you, it’s them.

Getting there: Sobo Connect, Conference Center, third floor, Bonacasa, opposite Kashmir Emporium, PM Road, Fort, call 9820563342, Rs 2,500 for three hours.

We get them all the time, queries about what the perfect gift would be for an upcoming baby shower, parent's anniversary, boyfriend's birthday (he enjoys fly fishing and chick flicks). These days, however, there's an algorithm for everything, including one that's making us Scouters obsolete: Giveter, a new website has handpicked gifts, and drop down menus where you can choose the adjectives that best suits the person you’re buying a gift for, plus a price range. Once you’ve selected those, it throws up options you can buy online.

Giveter's layout is snazzy and easy to use and they add new gifts to their menu at regular intervals. At the time of writing, there were 2,526 gifts on the site, tied up with shopping websites like Flipkart and Healthkart. In order to gift something, you have to log in (you can also choose to log in with your Facebook or Google details) and click ‘Gift this’ on the present you want, which will then redirect you to the home website. We wish there was an option to pay directly on Giveter, to make the process more streamlined.

Giving on the Edge

We decided to give it a spin: the age range was ambiguous so we picked ‘youth’ (others include ‘married’ or ‘middle’), for a ‘Friend (her)’ on her birthday, who is ‘creative, stylish, a frequent traveller, a book lover and a drinker/smoker’. The gifts generated ranged from yes-please (a Canon 60D SLR) to maybe (a pretty blue Japanese sake set) to you-don’t-really-know-us-do-you? (Hitler’s Mein Kampf). Next, we tried a present for our dad, putting in ‘book lover, traveler and stylish’. This was far more of a miss, with uninspired cufflinks, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and an Amar Chitra Katha mythology set (for your dad’s grandkids?). Gifts for our (outgoing, practical) mum turned up an outdoor canopy and a hair dryer.

On the whole, Giveter is useful for people you might not know very well. We found a keychain hipflask, a beautiful set of martini glasses, and a modular laptop desk that fits on your knees when you’re working in bed. Now, if only Mein Kampf didn’t keep showing up under presents for the chick-flick-fly-fishing loving boyfriend, we’d be happy to leave the next special occasion to Giveter’s discretion. Führer your cause!

Getting there: Log on to Giveter, browsing free, Rs 2,750 for a modular desk.

What: Citybliss Spa’s permanent location, third floor, C’est La Vie building, 164 Hill Road, next to Godrej Nature’s Basket, Bandra (W), 9167999666, open all days 11 am to 10 pm, starts at Rs 790, Rs 20,000 for yearly membership.

Why: Our favorite spa-on-wheels now has a permanent parking spot at C’est La Vie, Bandra, with separate sections for men and women, Jacuzzis, therapy rooms, and wet-and-dry baths. You can pay per session – we’d pick from their long list of body massages and hydro-therapies – or get a yearly membership, which allows you access to the C’est La Vie swimming pool, café and restaurant. PS: The club itself has always seemed a bit dodgy to us, but perhaps it’s getting a makeover? 

When: You need some spa-rks and recreation.

We could try and ask you out this Sunday, but we couldn’t possibly be smoother than a guy covered in grease. Meet Kyle Pereira, a bike critic for an auto magazine, who's inviting you to hang at his garage on weekends.

Kyle recently launched Garage Built Motorcycles, a bike hub in Andheri where you can bring your classic, vintage or Royal Enfield motorcycle for repair, restoration and/or a re-paint. The motorbike makeover guru will even throw in chai and advice for free. No wheeling dealing, this.

What’s Your Handle?

“Motorcycles run in the family—my mum and dad would often go on dates on a 1963 Jawa 250, the same bike my brother and I learned to ride on,” Kyle tells us, adding that it’s one of his favourite bikes to work on at his new garage.

Operational only on late weeknights and all day on Sunday, Garage Built Motorcyles is more than just rehab for bikes. Here, you can also stop by to swap biking stories, watch Kyle restore cool motorcycles and even help out if you like. “I come across so many people who don't have a clue about what makes their bikes tick,” he explains. “Sitting with the mechanic, chilling, learning, getting your hands dirty—that’s a sure shot way of improving your biking experience.”

If you have an older motorcycle, Kyle can give it a complete makeover, including rewiring, refitting, repaint, tune-up, and add other customised features. On the other hand, with new commuter and imported motorcycles, he will only be able to do minor tweaks, but he can point you in the right direction or recommend the best service centre.