The mouse in Srithan’s palm was warm now, warmer than it had any right to be. Twenty-seven days of clutching the same piece of moulded plastic and the thing had begun to feel like a pulse.

Across the glass-walled conference room, Niyansh tapped a Reynolds pen against the edge of his laptop. Tak. Tak. Tak. Outside, the corridor lay bleached under tube-light, a housekeeping trolley squeaking somewhere near the pantry, the smell of Lizol trailing behind it like a stray thought. Beyond the glass, the campus lights of Cyber Towers blinked amber and white, a scatter of little dying stars.

“Srithan, you know the policy,” Niyansh said, not unkind, not warm either. “AI has swallowed half the testing scope. If you’re not billed by next Friday, HR will have to take a call.”

Pravalika from HR sat with her laptop tilted like a shield. Her lipstick was the colour of over-ripe jamun. She began her sentences the same way each time, as though she had rehearsed them on the metro. “It’s not personal, Srithan. Market realities. We can support upskilling in GenAI. There’re internal courses…”

He rolled the mouse in his palm. The red laser blinked against his fingers, a tiny wound of light.

You’re safer than me, mousie, he thought. No KRA. No rating. No visa rejection stamp on your belly.

His mind, always disloyal at such moments, wandered off. To the lane Ameerpet, where he had stood three Fridays ago pretending to look for an ATM. To the Kissht app on his phone, its notifications multiplying like silverfish behind a damp wall. To Amma in Vijayawada, telling the neighbour aunty that her son was saving for a two-BHK in Kondapur.

Amma thinks I’m saving for a flat. I’m paying EMIs for my mistakes.

“Sir, I’ll try,” he heard himself say. His voice sounded like somebody else’s borrowed shirt.

Niyansh nodded, already half-turned to his screen. Pravalika closed her laptop with a soft, corporate click, the same click that jailers make when the day’s paperwork is done.

Srithan walked out. In the corridor his knuckles whitened around the mouse. The plastic groaned once, small and pitiful, like a field creature caught in a fist. He loosened his grip only when he saw his own reflection in the glass panel of the fire exit. Sunken cheeks. Two-day stubble. Eyes that had forgotten what watercolour looked like when it bled into wet paper.

~*~

He had once known.

There was a boy in a Vijayawada school corridor who drew Chiranjeevi on the back of his Maths notebook, the pencil dust smudged into the hero’s cheekbone, giving him a sadness that the film posters never had. That boy’s father, Malleswara Rao, and mother, Nagamani, sat in the headmaster’s office on a wooden bench polished by decades of anxious hands, and heard the words engineering seat guaranteed, and their faces became two lamps on a Kartika night.

On the RTC bus home, Amma had clutched his wrist as if he might jump out of the window. “You have to go to America, kanna. Our entire future is in your hands.”

He had looked down. Charcoal on his fingertips. In her hand, a Sri Chaitanya brochure, the paper still smelling of the press.

Painting later, he’d told himself. Degree first. Then painting.

Then C programming. Then Java. Then a room-mate named Varun who blared Ravi Teja mass numbers and shouted, “Oye, America doesn’t mean art, bro. Finish this lab or you’ll get a backlog.”

Then the convocation gown, rented for two hundred rupees, the tassel scratching his ear as Nanna adjusted his collar. Then the visa window at the US consulate in Chennai. The officer’s face, kind and terrible at once, sliding the passport back through the slit. “I’m sorry. You do not qualify this time.”

Once. Twice. Thrice.

Amma on a scratchy phone call. “No problem. At least you’ve landed a job at a big company in Hyderabad, haven’t you? Get on with it. They’ll send you onsite soon.”

The security gate had beeped. The lanyard had cut into his neck. And an IT support boy from Nizamabad had placed a mouse into his palm as though handing him a small, obedient god.

That was seven years ago. The god had not answered a single prayer since.

~*~

Now, in Madhapur, the hostel room had walls the colour of overboiled chai, dull and slightly scorched. His unfinished canvases leaned behind the almirah like children who had given up asking for attention. On his laptop, a pop-up. No new project allocated. On his phone, an Insta reel of a boy in Baroda selling out his solo show. He watched it twice, thumbed the like button, then closed everything and opened a video called Prompt Engineering for GenAI Test Automation.

The presenter spoke of “future-proofing your career.” The word future sounded like a dish nobody in his hostel could afford.

~*~

The next morning, the bay of empty desks stretched around him like an abandoned railway platform. Only the AC hummed, a rhythmic ghrrr like a dog growling softly in its sleep when he stopped noticing it.

His Teams pinged. Niyansh—Any updates on that AI course, Srithan? Need to show some progress in next review.

He typed Sure sir, deleted it, typed Working on it sir, sent it. His mouse slid. A blank email flew off to the Delivery Head’s inbox before he could stop it. His heart did a small, panicked hop, like a lizard on a hot wall.

He shut his eyes. Somewhere in his head, the ranch hands in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men were bucking barley in silence. One wrong move and the boss would can you. Same tune, different flute.

~*~

At the chai bandi outside the tower, Prasad Rao was already on his second cutting. Prasad Rao, forty-eight, once a Java Full-Stack demigod, now on a thirty-day PIP. His moustache had gone salt-and-pepper, the pepper losing.

“Hi, Srithan. Sit.”

They sat on the low cement ledge. A stray brown dog scratched itself under the neem tree, patient as a philosopher.

“You’ve read that Steinbeck fellow?” Prasad Rao asked, blowing on his tea. Of Mice and Men. That old man Candy. Scared they’ll shoot his dog, then scared they’ll can him next. Same story here. Once AI learns your work, they don’t need your body.”

Srithan tried to smile. “At least this mouse in my hand has a confirmed role, sir.”

Prasad Rao laughed. It came out cracked, an old harmonium wheeze. “My daughter has NEET coaching fees next year. I’m learning some new framework at night. My wife thinks I’m watching cricket highlights.” He rubbed his eyes. They were pink at the corners, veined like a hibiscus petal.

Srithan looked at his own reflection in the steel tumbler and did not recognise the man there.

~*~

That Friday night he took an auto to Ameerpet, telling himself he needed a new charger cable. But his feet carried him past the electronics shops and stopped at a narrow art supply store wedged between a xerox centre and a Domino's. The shop smelled of linseed oil and fresh gesso, and the smell hit him somewhere behind the ribs, in the place where old songs live.

He walked the aisles. Winsor & Newton watercolours in their small metal pans, each colour a shut door. Prussian blue. Burnt sienna. A sap green so alive it seemed to pulse under the plastic wrap. He picked up a Kolinsky sable brush, size four, and held it between his fingers. His hand remembered. The balance, the taper, the soft give of the belly against his thumb.

The price sticker said fourteen hundred rupees. His Kissht EMI was due in three days.

He placed the brush back on its hook, tender and reluctant, and walked out with empty hands pushed deep into his pockets. At the metro station, families slept on newspapers, their children curled into their mothers like commas. His backpack, with the office mouse zipped inside, felt heavier than his wallet, which was now nearly empty.

At the hostel, three missed calls from the loan app. He deleted them and lay down under the ceiling fan, which wobbled like a drunk uncle at a wedding.

~*~

Sunday video call. The plastic showcase behind Amma held brass Lakshmi idols and a photo of him at convocation, the tassel still crooked.

Amma’s voice was bright, dangerous. “Kanna, one girl. Father is a bank manager in Guntur. They asked about onsite chances. Also salary package…”

Srithan’s tongue turned to wet cotton. “Amma, company is restructuring now. Because AI… an onsite posting is difficult now.”

The silence that followed had a shape. Nanna’s eyes moved to the tube-light, as though counting the moths. Sravya, his sister, tried a small joke about her college hostel food. Amma smiled the smile she used at funerals and said, “Okay, kanna. We have a vow to fulfil at Tirumala. Must go next month. It’ll work.”

After they hung up, he picked up the mouse from his desk and traced its curve with his thumb, gently, like it was a small mango he did not want to bruise.

You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. That’s why I like you, he whispered.

~*~

On Wednesday, Niyansh called him into a huddle-room the size of a Maruti Alto. The screen said AI-Driven Testing CoE—Pilot.

“This is the chance,” Niyansh said, and for the first time his voice had a small crack of hope in it, not for Srithan, perhaps, but for his own delivery numbers. “Client demo Friday. Everyone’s busy. You’re free. Do it well, I can push to keep you. Even in the CoE.”

Srithan nodded. Inside, a voice not entirely his own asked, One more dream of the farm, or one more rope for the neck?

That night he stayed back in the empty office, practising the demo to his own reflection in the dead conference-room screen. His mouse skated over dashboards he could not have cared less about. On the whiteboard, in the bottom corner, without meaning to, he drew a small field mouse holding a tiny briefcase. Then a glass tower above it. Then a crack in the tower.

He stepped back. It was the first thing he had drawn in four years.

~*~

In the cafeteria the next day, he opened Prasad Rao’s yellowed paperback of Of Mice and Men. The pages had turmeric fingerprints. He read the part where George shoots Lennie behind the ear. The clatter of steel plates around him thinned to nothing.

In that book, useless bodies get removed. Here, being benched is the same thing. Only it’s done by email.

He read a few sentences about lost dreams. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘m ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. He muttered under his breath, “Dreams are for surviving, not for living.”

Outside, under the rain tree at the edge of the campus, he found Madhumita Sanyal from the UI team sketching wireframes into her notebook. Except it wasn’t a wireframe. It was a hibiscus flower, red as a bride’s toe.

He sat down without asking. “Madhumita, I never wanted to be here. I wanted to paint. Now I can’t even draw a straight line without my hand shaking.”

She did not look shocked. She opened her planner and peeled back a small watercolour taped inside. Two herons over the Musi.

“Everyone here wanted to be something else, Srithan,” she said quietly. “But if painting is still inside you, then being benched… maybe it’s time. Not punishment."

He looked at her herons for a long minute. Somewhere in the glass tower behind them, another mouse was breathing.

~*~

Friday.

Same glass room. Same Niyansh. Same Pravalika with the jamun lipstick. This time Srithan had just finished demoing the AI tool to a panel that included two directors from Dallas on a jittery Zoom link.

The demo worked. It wasn’t spectacular. One director, a bald man with yellow teeth, said, “Frankly, this tool means fewer people can do more work. We may not need such a big team.”

Nobody in the room disagreed. Not even Niyansh. Especially not Niyansh.

After the Zoom died, Niyansh sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Good effort, Srithan. Client’s scaling down anyway. I can push to keep you in the CoE on a lower band. Six months. After that, no guarantees.”

Pravalika added, in her jailer’s voice, “We can also support a transition if you’d like to explore external opportunities.”

Srithan’s palm settled on the mouse. Seven years of it. Warm as a small living thing.

He took a breath.

“Sir, thank you. But I think… I’ll make this transition myself.”

Niyansh blinked. “What d’you mean?”

“Issue the pink slip. Or I’ll send my resignation this evening. Either way, I don’t want to be on this ranch any more.”

Pravalika’s mouth opened, then closed. Niyansh looked half-annoyed, half-something else. Perhaps envy. Perhaps a very old memory of an unfinished watercolour of his own.

~*~

At his desk, Srithan opened a plain text editor and typed the resignation email in six clean lines. No drama. No thank-you-for-the-opportunity. Just the truth of a man laying down a burden.

Before clicking Send, he did something small.

He unplugged the mouse. He tore a yellow Post-it from the pad. He drew, with his blue Reynolds, a tiny mouse curled up, tail tucked in, sleeping. He stuck the Post-it gently on top of the plastic body and left it in the centre of the desk.

Stay well, little mousie, he thought. You’re always just doing your job. Now I’ll try doing mine.

Then he pressed Ctrl+Enter.

~*~

Some months later, above a bakery in a narrow lane in Yousufguda, there was a room that smelled of turpentine and warm bun-maska rising from the floor below. Canvases leaned against every wall, some awful, some good. Two framed sketches wore small red SOLD stickers from a weekend show at Phoenix Arena.

Srithan sat on the floor, cross-legged, painting a small field mouse running through a tangle of black cables under a cracked glass tower. His hair had grown longer. His stubble had chosen a shape at last.

His phone buzzed. Amma.

He put it on speaker.

“I haven’t told my friends that you lost your job.” Her voice had a soft catch in it, then steadied. “But… listening to you… you sound happier now, kanna.”

He dipped his brush into a small steel bowl of water. Blue rippled outward like a slow secret.

“The job’s gone, Amma. But the work—the work is right here.”

She was quiet a while. Then, “Does painting sell?”

“Little by little,” he said. “Enough for now.”

She did not ask about America. He did not promise a flat. Somewhere behind her voice he could hear the pressure cooker whistle four times, and Nanna’s slippers scuff across the veranda.

“But the art directors of two Telugu films called me this morning...” he trailed off, sensing his mother was no longer listening.

He hung up and stepped onto the balcony. Below, in the amber evening, a stray brown dog slept in the middle of the lane, and the traffic—autos, a Swiggy bike, a Bolero—found its way around him without a single horn. The dog did not stir. He owned the lane with a sureness no landlord in Hyderabad ever would.

Srithan looked at his own hand. A smear of Prussian blue on the side of his palm, near the same spot where charcoal used to sit when he was fifteen.

He went back in, dipped the fine brush, and signed his name in the corner of the mouse painting. Small. Just legible. The letters slightly crooked, like a boy still learning to write in Telugu on a slate.

The old mouse, wherever it was in that glass tower, was probably still on that desk, still wearing its yellow Post-it, still sleeping.

He was not holding a mouse to keep his job any more.

He was drawing one because he had finally woken up into the life he wanted, brush in hand.