There are some pieces of clothing you’ll probably need to wear just once in your life: that red, flowy gown when you run down a dramatic flight of stairs and into the arms of a lover; that vintage-y white lace sari for your Indian re-enactment of Elizabeth. We found both of these garments and more at Dial-a-Dress, a clothes rental hub at Khar that mostly leases out heavy saris and can stitch you a blouse to go with it. Heart pleat!

Deeds and Bonds

Yes, we know you’re a little skeptical about renting clothes too, but a meeting with owner Sonia Mehra might be able to change that. Or at the very least make you more comfortable with the idea of garment leasing. The London School of Fashion graduate keeps a neat studio, and assures you that all garments are dry cleaned before you rent them. Also, 20% of your rent money goes towards NGOs and hospitals working with cancer patients. Sign the (good) deed!

Available for rent is Indian wear, cocktail dresses and a smattering of other Western wear. We recommend you skip the Bangkok-ish rack of tops and casual dresses that you would be better off buying at full price elsewhere in Bandra. We’re not big fans of their gowns either, but the cherry red maxi with a silver embroidered high neck immediately caught our attention, as did the airy black sheer jumpsuit that can pass off as an elegant gown.

Across the Border

A browse through the entire collection and we figured that if you have to rent at Dial-a-Dress, Indian is the way to go. bpb loves the white georgette and cutwork lace sari with black and red floral embroidery on the border and Masaba-like large gold polka dots. Also pretty is the white organza tissue sari with bronze zardozi work. If you’re looking for something more colourful, there’s a fun green and red dotted sheer sari. All the saris come with extra material (with embroidery) for the blouse, which can be made according to your size, even if you’re just renting it. Sonia also has a couple of designs that have been pre-pleated and stitched accordingly, making it super easy to drape.

What’s also cool is that she has a whole bunch of pretty blouses in sizes 36 and 38 that you can rent, in case you already have a sari and are looking for just the top. We have our eye on a black three-fourth sleeve blouse with tiny mirror work that can go well with many saris.

Chiconomics

All the above mentioned garments can be rented for Rs 2,500 to Rs 2,800 for 24 hours, while renting a blouse costs Rs 1,000 for a day. The more heavily embroidered wedding saris can also be rented but this would cost upwards of Rs 10,000, which seems impractical to shell out if you’re just leasing it for the day. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the racks, then Sonia can probably rummage through her secret cupboard neatly stacked with piles of garments that she doesn’t have the space to display.

And in a week’s time, the online store cum rental portal (www.dialadress.com) will go live offering the service all over India. Drape of good hope!

Getting there: Dial-a-dress, first floor, Jains Arcade, above Costa Coffee, Khar Danda Road, Khar, call 9820309944, rental starts at Rs 1,000 for a blouse and Rs 2,500 for a sari against a deposit which will be returned after the garment is given back, after 24 hours the rental price increases by 20%, www.dialadress.com will be live in a week’s time.

What: Carpet shampoo and home deep cleaning by Dial4cleanhome, call 9920561736 or visit www.dial4cleanhome.com, start at Rs 2,300 for a 1BHK.

Why: As a harried army of sweepers scrubbed Sarah Jessica Parker’s home clean in time for US President Obama’s visit last night, we wondered if we should have sent SJP this. Dial4cleanhome.com offers specialised apartment tidiness services and promises to reach places that your house help can’t – carpet shampoo, couch wash and house “deep cleaning” for when you’ve returned from that long vacation. A must(y)-have! Before recently foraying into private homes, these guys have taken corporate offices like DNA, Times Music, Levi’s and the Jindal House to the cleaners. SJP, read it and sweep!

When: You want a new kind of grime riot disco.

What: Grow a website in 24 hours with Asap-Overnight Design, call Dr Ritesh Reddy at 09920750507, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or visit the Facebook page, starts at Rs 15,000 and 50% off for start-ups.

Why: Chrome wasn’t built in a day, but your website (with a corresponding Facebook page!) could be. Just call Dr Ritesh Reddy and his merry bandwidth, and they’ll build you an HTML enabled website featuring all sorts of functionalities like RSS feeds, slideshows, audio/video compatibility and a Joomla or Wordpress content management system in under 24 hours.

When: You need a high-speed connection.

Usually, it takes at least three dates to know this about a girl – she hates it when people ask her for change, her dad calls her ‘Ponga’, she dreams of spaceships, has recurring nightmares about dumbbells and the building she lives in doesn’t have an elevator.

But in the case of Mumbai-based illustrator Saakshi Vyas, the information is there to browse in five seconds or less, with attached visuals so you don’t have to close your eyes and imagine. Ahem. Moving on.

Under the moniker In the Middle of Something, Saakshi (currently pursuing a post-graduate degree in graphic design) does fun illustrations with incidents from her personal life posing as subjects, prettied up by curvy grey monsoon clouds and floral bed sheets that could well be mistaken for gardens.

How To Use Saakshi

As of last month, the girl who loves rain and Jack Johnson and coffee, has started providing this as a service. If you’d like to turn your mundane moments into illustrations, send Saakshi your photograph and a brief, and she’ll have the picture ready in two days, which can also be printed on products like pillow covers, socks and pajamas. For the self-obsessed, she even converts simple mug shots into illustrated Facebook/Twitter profile pictures (start at Rs 500). The non-narcissistic can use In the Middle of Something as a gifting service – a cool alternative for (upcoming) Father’s Day greeting cards. Saakshi also creates customised comic books on order.

If we’ve taken the mystery out of Saakshi, you should know that there's still a lot left to be desired, many illustrations left to interpret (we read something about ‘pressing button happiness’). Perhaps you’d like to ask her on a date and find out.

Getting there: In the Middle of Something, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , view the Facebook page here, a simple cartoon illustration starts at Rs 500, complex ones at Rs 1,200.

What: Doggy bags for your international travel by Heat 2 Eat, call 9820865453 /9820579350, view the Facebook page here, pick up from Juhu, Rs 300 for a kilo pack of ready-to-eat poha.

Why: If you’re too cool to pack theplas for your vacation, outsource the job to mother-daughter duo Rita and Pankti, who put them in vacuum sealed bags. They also do their own ready-to-eat doggy bags for travellers – masala khichdi, upma, poha, missal, Gujarati dal – that can be cooked in the microwave in two minutes after adding water. Unlike the ones available in the supermarket, these they claim, have no added preservatives or colour.

When: You want to say aloha to poha.

What: Comic art murals by Fiza Khan, call 9819822247 or email platinumflywave@gmail.com, start at Rs 25,000.

Why: A course at NIFT Delhi; six-month module with Marvel Comics in LA; and a decade of playing Tekken video games are responsible for artist Fiza Khan’s graphic novel wall paintings, which come with three point perspectives and dynamic body movements. Since your room is used to all kinds of graphic content, naturally, we thought of you. Fiza can do Iron Man-ish superheroes, Manga art, mythological gods and her favourite: characters inspired by Japanese tattoo art.

When: You need a Sliver of Surfer.

Most Indian weddings start and end with a bang. So when photographer Vinayak Das of Photo Tantra tells us that his favourite wedding shoot ever was “the Big Bang One”, we look at him with little excitement.  But he gleams with pride, showing us this album. We browse. Oh vow, we shoot back.

Chuck Lore

The album will lead you to pictures of Kunal Nayyar (who plays super geek Rajesh Koothrapalli on TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory)’s Delhi wedding, that Photo Tantra shot. The pictures are super fun and un-shaadi like, with the actor and his bride (a former Miss India) hovering in the air like matrimonial superheroes and Kunal peering myopically through a string of seed pearls hanging from his turban. Our favorite is a photo of Nayyar grabbing his bride’s sari, making an Incredible Hulk face while she laughs (also watch Kunal explain Indian wedding rituals to Conan). Beauty and the Geek, indeed!

This wedding photography company is run by husband-wife duo Vinayak Das and Snigdha Sheel. They have very few photos to show for their own wedding - seven friends they entrusted with the task of taking pictures found a bottle of Black Label and the rest is history – but they can definitely make your wedding look good in print.

They start by making a special effort to become friends with their subjects, an intimacy that is evident in their lushly gorgeous, intensely personal shots. With them, you’re much more likely to see photos of fire eaters and grinning brides than customary coma-inducing “stage” ones. The duo can shoot a wedding of any size, at any destination (you’ll have to pay for travel and accommodation) and work with a team of junior photographers as well – they did one with 4,000 guests, and had six photographers on duty. Their junior photographers can also be hired for minor pre-wedding functions or for other events like anniversaries and birthdays. They're happy to work on your wedding too, but only if it’s happening next year: Photo Tantra is booked up through the coming season.

Moral Mushrooms

Before the Big Bang, Vinayak’s most fun nuptial memory is of one they shot in Goa, where fire eaters made light of the situation and the couple ran into the sea shortly after finishing their vows. That’s what you get for saying I do!

Getting there: Visit www.phototantra.com, call 08860636552 or view the Facebook group here, starts at Rs 2.5 lakh for a two to three day wedding.

What do you crave after your neighbourhood bar shuts? A Mars bar, Maggi and cigarettes. What does your bedroom suddenly decide it needs at 2 am? Mint and condoms. What is it that you must have after a graveyard work shift? Bourbon - the biscuits not the booze.

All this and more can be delivered to your home between 11 pm and 3 am courtesy Fly By Knight, a new midnight delivery service that is slated to launch this weekend, June 1. Initially, the service will operate only between Bandra and Andheri – if you live in South Mumbai, there’s a similar service titled Night Call – dropping off goods at your home in twenty minutes flat.

Catcher in the Rye

Fly by Knight is an idea that all of us have had after moving the party from a bar to someone’s home, while craving munchies, mixers and for those of us who’ve had too much to drink, sachets of Eno. But the person who finally executed it is Neha Jain, former Google Analytics and Double Click Consultant at Google India’s Media and Platform Solutions, where she worked for five and a half years.

Although it would be much more romantic for Fly By Knight to be one of those underground businesses that operates in the shadows, this one’s all legit, which means permissions are in place, goods are sold at MRP (plus a Rs 50 flat fee no matter how much you order) and alas, alcohol doesn’t make the menu. So remember to stock that cabinet at home you call a bar.

On TV, the cast of Mad Men is getting drunk at an office party. On a Bombay couch, a photographer is imagining what it would be like to set up a photo booth bang in the middle of that do, complete with crazy props. Just then, we think about Don Draper with a fake mustache and a goofy grin. It would be swell, we tell her. She says she told us so.

The fantasy we invaded is Sheena Dabholkar’s, a freelance photographer and copywriter who also runs a fun concept called Incredibooth. Invite her to your party and her plus one will include a hand-made photo booth, where props and back drops can be customised according to the theme of your party. She calls it “happy picture booths for happy occasions”.

Flash Someone

Incredibooth’s photo service entitles your party to three hours of picture clicking with Sheena – her work has appeared in publications like Wallpaper*, The Guardian and Mint – and a neutral backdrop. Depending on your budget, props, prints and instant pictures can be delivered.

So far, Sheena has set up picture booths at about eight parties that range from a regular wedding photo hut and the predictable retro theme birthday to a wilder one in Bandra where props included “fake flamingos and stuff”. Kitsch, vampire and beach are just some of the other themes she throws at us. Basically, “we do birthdays, launches, weddings, barmitzvahs, graduations, festivals, office dos, fundraisers, typography conventions or any sort of party that might involve cake,” she says.

Sheena also did the super pretty Elle and Hermes soiree recently, where guests were clicked with dreamy eyes and poetic scarves. Then there was Festival Sherpa that hired the twenty-something year old to set up a booth at the Sunburn music festival, where the concept was to use a projector to throw psychedelic images on subjects being clicked (see image above). We’ll have what the booth was having, thanks.

Into the Blue

If you go to Rohima Sequeira’s for lunch, you may get served food on a tile. Pretty and polished sure, but you’ll still be taking your tempura off a tile.  In between courses and chatter, you’ll notice other similar elements of surprise around her home. Finally you’ll ask and Rohima will tell you that she’s a “compulsive DIY-er”, which led her to launch this budget revamp service with a ton of do-it-yourself ideas.

A marketing professional at a leading home decor magazine, Rohima turned her compulsive need to pretty up things into a business, after the insane number of ‘likes’ one of her refurbished cabinets garnered on Facebook. You can call Rohima if: you have a boring piece of furniture that needs new life; you need a cool buy on a budget; you need to brighten up a space at home or at the office.

No matter what option you pick, Rohima will be there with an arsenal of paintbrushes, primer, thrift store finds and power tools. And as she approaches, legs will run for cover, legs that belong to boring stools, computer chairs and wooden desks that you've grown disenchanted with. While some of the projects she’s worked on sound disappointingly familiar - wall murals and such - inquire instead about the couch covered in doilies, chrysanthemums blooming out of tea kettles and an old cabinet wrapped in pretty fabric and studded with a crystal knob (see image above). Open for business!

Make Your Own Cabinet in a Blanket

Source two metres of fabric with interesting prints.

Cut the fabric so that the four sides (excluding the door) are covered with the same print and the door with a different one for a fun touch.

Tautly mount the fabric over the cabinet making sure that you staple gun only at the bottom, inside the cabinet and behind. This allows for a clean finish.

Fit with crystal knob sourced from Turquoise (Reclamation, Bandra).

Who's crafty now?

Getting there: Call Rohima Sequeira on 9820613844 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , start at Rs 3,000 to re-furbish a desk.