Gifts & Wraps

Our place is in the S Wing of the Refinery V building, specifically Flat No 11. It isn't a typical storefront on the street; you have to come into the residential area near Hatkeshwar Road in Chembur. Being near the Aashish Theater means we hear the crowds on the weekends quite often. Gifts & Wraps is mostly just a big room with tables and a lot of paper rolls everywhere. Different colored ribbons hang on the walls and stacks of boxes sit in the corner. Sometimes the flat gets a bit messy because of all the scraps of paper on the floor. We spend a lot of time cutting and folding things manually. Chembur can be quite dusty, so we have to keep everything covered with plastic sheets when we aren't using it. It’s a quiet work environment for the most part, except for the theater traffic nearby. People find us because they live in the building or they’ve seen the small sign downstairs. We don't have fancy displays, just the materials we use daily. Usually, someone is sitting at the main table working on a project with a pair of scissors. The light in the flat is okay during the morning, but the overhead tubes have to be used by four o'clock. It’s just how we run things here. A small kettle for tea is kept in the back. It’s a simple setup for the kind of work we do, and we like the pace of it.