Where is Himani? No seriously. WHERE IS HIMANI?
Himani's job title changes depending on what Shruti needs in the next ten minutes.
STRUTT, as a company, prides itself on being lean, agile, and deeply intentional about everything it does. Every hire is considered. Every role is purposeful. Every person on the team is here because they bring something specific, measurable, and irreplaceable to the table.
This blog is about none of that. This blog is about the fact that Shruti cannot locate Himani and has not been able to locate her for the last six minutes and things are beginning to unravel.
Himani joined as the third member of the STRUTT team. Before her arrived Arjun, then Sai — both excellent, both committed, both forming what was by all available evidence a perfectly content little boys club along with Vishesh with its own warmth and its own rhythm and absolutely no one to tell them when they were overcomplicating something. Then came Himani. Quietly. Without fanfare. And proceeded, over the following weeks, to become the kind of person whose absence from a room is immediately, physically noticeable — like when someone turns off a light you didn't realise was on.
"The boys club didn't protest. It couldn't. She was good at most of it than anyone wanted to admit out loud.
Now. What does Himani do? Genuinely good question. On paper — Customer Happiness Officer. In practice — that plus strategic corporate tie-ups, plus whatever is currently on Shruti's mind that needs to be handled by someone before noon, plus a quiet, ongoing apprenticeship in the founder's office that nobody has formally announced but everyone has noticed. Her job title, if updated in real time, would change approximately four times before lunch.
Her business card, if STRUTT made business cards, would need to be printed on both sides. And the back.
Here is what the STRUTT employee handbook — which does not exist but absolutely should — would say about Himani's role, if it were being honest: Himani does the things that need to be done, in the order they need to be done, at the speed they need to be done, before being asked, and this is why Shruti has developed what medical professionals would classify as a moderate-to-severe case of separation anxiety that the rest of the team has silently agreed to never directly acknowledge.
"The window is four minutes. That is the scientifically observed, team-verified interval between Himani's chair becoming empty and the words 'where's Himani' leaving Shruti's mouth. Four minutes. The team has timed it. More than once. They have not shared these findings."
There was a Tuesday — peak heat week, naturally, because everything happens during peak heat week — when Himani stepped out for what she described as "just twenty minutes." Routine. Uneventful. Back shortly. In those twenty minutes, Shruti started three separate tasks, finished none of them, asked the room once if anyone had heard from Himani, was told yes she'll be back soon, reorganised her entire afternoon, asked again, was told the same thing with slightly more emphasis, and by the time Himani walked back through the door was greeted with the expression of someone who had been managing a completely internal crisis for nineteen minutes and was choosing to say nothing about it.
Himani sat down, opened her laptop, and got back to work. Because she is a professional. Because she is unflappable. Because she has — through observation, experience, and the particular wisdom of someone who is being quietly trained for bigger things — come to understand that this is simply what it looks like when a founder trusts you completely and hasn't developed a subtle way of showing it yet.
Shruti, for her part, would like it on record that she is not dependent on anyone's physical presence to function effectively as a founder and leader of a growing company. She is fully capable of independent thought, strategic decision-making, and sustained productivity regardless of who is or is not sitting within her immediate eyeline at any given moment.
"She reviewed this blog before it was published, made three edits to the part about her, approved the rest without comment, and then — within the same breath, unprompted, while handing back the laptop — asked if anyone knew where Himani was."
Third to join. First in the room when something needs handling. The one who ended the boys club not with a speech but simply by being excellent in a way that made argument pointless. Customer happiness, corporate strategy, founder's office — Himani doesn't have a job title at STRUTT so much as a radius. Everything important happens within it.
Her desk is directly within Shruti's eyeline. This was not an accident. It has never been discussed. It will never be discussed. And she is, at the time of publishing, back at her desk and accounted for — which means somewhere on the third floor, a founder just took her first full breath of the morning.
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