A World That Refused to Die E-Book

Ishwar Singh

• Herausgeber: Ishwar Singh
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

This is not a story about saving the world.
It is a story about a world that refused to die.
For a long time, we have comforted ourselves with the belief that nature is fragile—something that exists at our mercy, waiting either to be protected or destroyed by human hands. We speak of the Earth as though it were a patient on a hospital bed, dependent on our decisions, our technologies, our promises.

But the truth is far less flattering—and far more humbling.
Nature has always been resilient. It has survived fire, flood, ice, and extinction long before human beings learned to name themselves. What it struggles to survive is not humanity itself, but human arrogance—the idea that we stand apart from the land we walk on, the water we drink, the air we breathe.

A World That Refused to Die was born from that realization.
This story does not offer easy villains or simple victories. It does not pretend that awareness alone can heal what has been damaged, nor that progress is inherently evil. Instead, it explores the quieter, more uncomfortable truth: that destruction often happens not through cruelty, but through convenience; not through hatred, but through indifference.

The characters in these pages do not become heroes by conquering nature. They become human by listening to it—by learning when to act, and when to step back. Their journey mirrors a question we all face, whether we acknowledge it or not: Can we learn to belong again, before it is too late?

This book is an invitation—not to panic, not to despair, and not to celebrate premature victories—but to reflect. To notice the silences we have grown used to. To question the comforts we mistake for progress. And to recognize that the Earth does not need grand gestures as much as it needs everyday humility.

If there is hope in this story, it lies not in humanity’s power, but in its capacity to learn.

The world has endured.
The question that remains is whether we are willing to change enough to endure with it.

Leseprobe

A World That Refused to Die

PROF. ISHWAR SINGH

Copyright © 2026 by Ishwar Singh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

A World That Refused to Die

By Ishwar Singh

Cover Design: Ishwar Singh

Interior Design: Ishwar Singh

Published in Italy

Second Edition: 2026

DEDICATed to

I am dedicating this book to my parents

Preface

This is not a story about saving the world.

It is a story about a world that refused to die.

For a long time, we have comforted ourselves with the belief that nature is fragile—something that exists at our mercy, waiting either to be protected or destroyed by human hands. We speak of the Earth as though it were a patient on a hospital bed, dependent on our decisions, our technologies, our promises.

But the truth is far less flattering—and far more humbling.

Nature has always been resilient. It has survived fire, flood, ice, and extinction long before human beings learned to name themselves. What it struggles to survive is not humanity itself, but human arrogance—the idea that we stand apart from the land we walk on, the water we drink, the air we breathe.

A World That Refused to Die was born from that realization.

This story does not offer easy villains or simple victories. It does not pretend that awareness alone can heal what has been damaged, nor that progress is inherently evil. Instead, it explores the quieter, more uncomfortable truth: that destruction often happens not through cruelty, but through convenience; not through hatred, but through indifference.

The characters in these pages do not become heroes by conquering nature. They become human by listening to it—by learning when to act, and when to step back. Their journey mirrors a question we all face, whether we acknowledge it or not: Can we learn to belong again, before it is too late?

This book is an invitation—not to panic, not to despair, and not to celebrate premature victories—but to reflect. To notice the silences we have grown used to. To question the comforts we mistake for progress. And to recognize that the Earth does not need grand gestures as much as it needs everyday humility.

If there is hope in this story, it lies not in humanity’s power, but in its capacity to learn.

The world has endured.

The question that remains is whether we are willing to change enough to endure with it.

— Prof. Ishwar Singh

A World That Refused to Die

Chapter 1: The Silent Morning

Morning did not arrive the way it used to.

It did not announce itself with the cheerful chatter of birds perched on electric wires, nor did it creep in gently with a cool breeze brushing against sleeping faces. Instead, it appeared suddenly—flat, dull, and strangely indifferent—like a stage light switched on without warning.

Vidhut opened his eyes before the alarm rang.

That alone unsettled him.

He lay still on his back, staring at the ceiling fan frozen above him. The fan had not stopped due to a power cut; he had switched it off himself sometime during the night because the air had felt unbearably dry. Even now, his skin felt tight, as though the moisture had been sucked out of it. He swallowed and felt his throat protest, rough and scratchy.

Silence filled the room.

Not the comforting silence of early dawn, but a dense, pressing quiet—too complete, too absolute. Vidhut listened carefully, hoping to catch some familiar sound: the clink of milk bottles, the whistle of the pressure cooker from a neighbor’s kitchen, the distant honk of a bus starting its route.

Nothing.

The absence felt loud.

He sat up slowly, his bare feet touching the floor. The tiles felt warmer than they should have at this hour. A thin film of dust clung to them, visible even in the dim light filtering through the curtains. Dust had become common lately—settling everywhere, refusing to stay away no matter how often the house was cleaned.

Vidhut pulled the curtains aside.

Outside, the neem tree stood exactly where it always had, tall and old, its trunk rough and deeply scarred by time. Yet something about it felt different. Its leaves drooped as if exhausted, their green dulled into a tired, yellowish shade. The branches did not sway. There was no breeze to move them, no birds to animate them.

Once, that tree had been alive with sound. Sparrows hopping from branch to branch. Mynas arguing loudly. Sometimes even parrots, their sharp cries slicing through the morning air.

Today, it was just a tree.

Still. Quiet. Alone.

Vidhut leaned against the window grill and breathed in deeply. The air carried a faint smell—dry earth mixed with something sharper, almost metallic. It reminded him of the smell that rose after construction work, when soil was disturbed and left exposed under the sun.

The sky above was a pale blue, washed out and weak, like a painting left too long under harsh light. The sun hovered low, its glow diffused by a thin haze that refused to lift.

“Strange,” Vidhut murmured.

He had grown up believing that mornings were sacred. His grandfather used to say that the health of a place could be judged by how it greeted the day. “If the morning is lively,” the old man would say, “the land is alive.”

By that measure, this land was dying.

Vidhut shook off the thought and went about his routine. He brushed his teeth, noticing how little water flowed from the tap. The pressure had reduced again. He filled a mug and paused, watching the water swirl inside. There was a faint cloudiness to it now, something he had begun noticing over the past year but had learned to ignore.

Ignore. Adjust. Adapt.

That had become the unspoken rule.

Outside, the street looked unchanged at first glance. Houses stood in neat rows, paint peeling slightly but intact. Shops were shuttered, waiting for the day to begin. A stray cow rummaged through a pile of garbage, plastic crackling beneath its hooves.

Vidhut walked toward the tea stall at the corner, his footsteps echoing more than usual on the empty road. The lack of movement made every sound sharper, more noticeable.

Mr. Sharma was already there, as he had been for decades, pouring tea with practiced hands. Steam rose from the kettle but vanished quickly, swallowed by the dry air.

“Morning,” Vidhut said.

Mr. Sharma looked up briefly. “Morning.”

No smile. No comment about the heat. No observation about the unusual stillness.

Vidhut took a cup and wrapped his fingers around it. The warmth felt comforting, but even that comfort seemed temporary, fragile.

“Feels hotter these days,” Vidhut said casually.

Mr. Sharma shrugged. “Summers are like that now.”

“Even mornings?” Vidhut pressed gently.

Another shrug. “What can we do?”

That answer—simple, resigned—troubled him more than outright denial would have.

As he sipped his tea, Vidhut watched the street come alive in slow motion. A few people stepped out of their houses, eyes fixed on their phones. Children waited for the school bus, backpacks hanging loosely, unaware of the world beyond their screens. An old woman swept dust from her doorstep, though there had been no wind to bring it there.

Dust again.

It was everywhere.

Vidhut finished his tea and continued walking, drawn instinctively toward the outskirts of town. The road narrowed, the buildings thinning out until fields stretched on either side. Or what remained of them.

Once, these fields had been a vibrant green, thick with crops that swayed proudly under the sun. He remembered running through them as a child, his legs scratched, his feet muddy, laughter spilling freely.

Now, the fields looked tired.

Large patches of soil lay exposed, cracked into jagged patterns like broken skin. The crops that did grow stood shorter, their leaves curled inward, as if trying to shield themselves from something unseen.

Vidhut stepped off the road and crouched down. He scooped up a handful of soil. It slipped through his fingers easily, dry and powdery, leaving his palm dusty.

“This isn’t right,” he whispered.

A memory surfaced, uninvited and vivid.

His grandfather sitting beneath the neem tree, pointing toward the sky. “The birds are the first to know,” he had said. “When they leave, something is wrong.”

Vidhut’s gaze shot upward.

The sky was empty.

No birds.

Not a single one.

A chill ran through him despite the growing heat.

He stood there longer than he realized, listening to the silence, feeling it press against his chest. It felt like standing in a room where something terrible had happened—everything outwardly normal, yet heavy with absence.

By the time he returned home, the sun had climbed higher, its heat turning oppressive far too early in the day. He closed the door behind him and sat by the window, pulling out an old notebook.

He had started keeping notes a few weeks ago—small things at first. Reduced water flow. Rising temperatures. Fewer insects. Dry soil.

At the time, it had felt unnecessary, almost foolish.

Now, it felt urgent.

He wrote slowly, carefully, as if naming these things gave them weight.

Outside, the neem tree creaked faintly.

There was still no wind.

The sound made him look up sharply. For a fleeting moment, it felt as though the tree were straining, trying to speak, its roots trapped beneath layers of concrete and neglect.

Vidhut closed his notebook.

A realization settled within him, heavy and unavoidable.

This silence was not peace.

It was not calm.

It was the quiet before collapse.

And while the town moved through its routines—drinking tea, sending children to school, sweeping dust that would return by evening—something beneath it all was shifting, cracking, waiting.

The morning had come silently.

But it would not stay silent forever.

Chapter 2: Cracks Beneath the Green

Niharika had always believed that the earth spoke quietly.

Not in dramatic earthquakes or roaring storms alone, but in subtler ways—through the texture of soil under bare feet, through the taste of water drawn from a familiar well, through the rhythm of seasons that once followed an unspoken promise. Most people ignored these whispers. Life had trained them to. But Niharika had learned, slowly and deliberately, to listen.

She woke to the same silence that had unsettled the town the previous morning.

For a few seconds, she lay still, staring at the faint outline of the window above her desk. Light seeped through the curtains, pale and lifeless, as though the day itself were reluctant to begin. She reached for her phone instinctively, not to check messages, but to look at the weather app.

No rain forecast. Again.

She sighed softly and swung her legs off the bed. The floor felt warm beneath her feet. It hadn’t rained properly in months—only brief, teasing drizzles that evaporated almost as soon as they touched the ground. The heat had become constant, pressing down day and night, blurring the boundary between seasons.

Niharika tied her hair into a loose braid and picked up her notebook. Unlike most notebooks, this one wasn’t filled with poetry or plans. Its pages were crowded with observations—dates, temperatures, sketches of leaves, notes on water levels, and hurried questions written in the margins.

She stepped outside, the notebook tucked under her arm.

The garden behind her house was small but once vibrant. Her mother used to grow tomatoes, coriander, and marigolds there. Now, only a few stubborn plants survived. The soil looked darker in some places, pale and cracked in others, as though it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be anymore.

Niharika knelt and pressed her fingers into the earth. The top layer crumbled instantly, dry and loose. Beneath it, the soil was strangely hard, compacted as if all life had been squeezed out of it.

She made a note.

Topsoil dry. Lower layer hardened. Poor moisture retention.

A butterfly fluttered past her briefly—just one—and then disappeared beyond the boundary wall. Once, the garden had been alive with them, dancing lazily between flowers. Now, even their presence felt like an accident.

She stood and walked toward the hand pump near the back gate. It had been there longer than she had, installed when groundwater was abundant and taken for granted. She gripped the handle and pumped.

Nothing.

She pumped again. And again.

Finally, a thin stream of water trickled out, sputtering unevenly before settling into a weak flow. Niharika filled a small steel bowl and held it up to the light.

The water looked clear enough at first glance, but she noticed tiny suspended particles drifting slowly, like dust trapped in glass. She dipped her finger in and tasted a drop.

A faint bitterness lingered on her tongue.

She frowned.

This was new.

She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook.

Water level critically low. Taste altered. Possible contamination or mineral imbalance.

Her phone buzzed. A message from Trisha flashed briefly on the screen—“Did you feel how hot it got last night? Even at 2 a.m.!”

Niharika typed a quick reply—“Yes. Not normal.”—and slipped the phone back into her pocket.

By mid-morning, she set out toward the fields beyond town. She carried her notebook, a small thermometer, and a sense of growing unease. The sun climbed quickly, its heat sharp and unrelenting. Sweat formed almost instantly at her temples.

She paused near the same stretch of land where Vidhut had stood the day before, though she did not know it yet. The fields lay open and exposed, their once-lush green reduced to uneven patches of survival.

A farmer stood near the edge, staring at his crops with a look that was neither angry nor surprised—just tired.

“Namaste,” Niharika said gently.

He nodded. “Namaste.”

She hesitated, then asked, “How’s the soil holding up?”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “It isn’t.”

She crouched and examined the ground more closely. The cracks ran deeper than she had expected, branching like veins across the surface. When she pressed her finger into one, it disappeared almost entirely.

“This didn’t happen before,” she said quietly.

The farmer wiped his forehead with the edge of his cloth. “Before, the soil listened to us. Now, it doesn’t recognize us anymore.”

The words stayed with her as she walked further. She measured the temperature—three degrees higher than average for this time of year. She noted the absence of insects. Even flies seemed fewer.

She looked up at the sky. The clouds were thin and scattered, stretched out like worn fabric. They promised nothing.

By afternoon, the heat became oppressive. Niharika retreated to the shade of an old banyan tree near the dried streambed. Once, water had flowed here year-round, shallow but steady. Now, it was little more than a scar in the land, littered with stones and plastic waste.

She sat and closed her eyes, listening.

The silence was broken only by the distant hum of a generator and the occasional crunch of dry leaves under passing feet. No water sounds. No frogs. No insects singing.

Her notebook lay open on her lap, pages filled with fragments that no longer felt isolated.

Dry soil. Bitter water. Rising temperatures. Vanishing life.

Individually, each could be explained away. Together, they formed a pattern that made her chest tighten.

She thought back to her childhood—the monsoons that arrived on time, the puddles that lasted for days, the cool evenings that followed hot afternoons. Seasons had once moved like a well-rehearsed dance.

Now, they stumbled over each other, confused and unpredictable.

A sudden gust of hot wind swept through the area, carrying dust that stung her eyes. She covered her face and waited for it to pass. When it did, the banyan’s leaves trembled weakly, shedding a few dry fragments that drifted to the ground.

Niharika felt a strange urge to apologize—to the tree, to the land, to something unseen.

She stood and made her way back toward town as the sky slowly shifted into an orange haze. The heat did not fade with the setting sun. Instead, it lingered, trapped, as if the earth itself had forgotten how to cool down.

At home, she spread her notes across the desk. She compared dates, drew lines between observations, circled repeated patterns. Her handwriting grew messier as urgency crept in.

This wasn’t random.

This wasn’t temporary.

Her phone buzzed again. This time, it was a message from Nikku: “Water supply cut early again. Any idea why?”

Niharika stared at the screen for a long moment before replying: “Yes. And it’s not just here.”

She leaned back in her chair, exhaustion settling into her bones. Outside, the neem tree in her yard stood motionless, much like the one outside Vidhut’s window. She noticed how its shadow had shortened over the years—not because of the sun’s path alone, but because the tree itself had grown thinner.

Her gaze drifted to the sky once more.

There were no stars.

A thin veil of haze blurred everything beyond immediate sight.

Niharika closed her notebook carefully.

For the first time, she allowed herself to think the thought she had been avoiding all day.

Something beneath the green surface of everyday life was cracking.

And if people continued to ignore these small signs—these quiet warnings—the cracks would widen until there was nothing left to stand on.

She switched off the light and lay down, but sleep did not come easily. Her mind replayed images of dry soil, bitter water, and empty skies. The earth had been speaking all along.

The question was no longer whether something was wrong.

It was whether anyone would listen before the whispers turned into screams.

Chapter 3: The Forgotten River

Tejas remembered the river before he saw it.

The memory arrived first—clear, vivid, almost cruel in its beauty.

Cold water rushing over his ankles. Smooth pebbles beneath his feet. The echo of laughter bouncing off the riverbanks as he and his friends raced paper boats made from old notebooks. The river had been wide then, confident, its surface broken by ripples that caught sunlight and shattered it into dancing shards of silver.

In those days, the river had a name that felt alive on the tongue.

Now, as Tejas stood on the cracked road leading toward it, the name felt heavy, like a lie repeated too often.

He had not planned to come here.

The visit was accidental—or at least that was what he told himself. Work had brought him back to his hometown after nearly twelve years. Meetings, deadlines, familiar faces that felt strangely distant. Everything had changed, and yet nothing had. The town still wore the same shape, the same roads, the same buildings—only older, dustier, more tired.

That morning, something had pulled him toward the outskirts. A restlessness he could not explain. His feet had chosen the direction long before his mind caught up.

Toward the river.

As he walked, fragments of the past clung to him. He remembered his father washing his hands in the river before evening prayers. His mother rinsing vegetables at the edge, sleeves rolled up, bangles clinking softly. He remembered festivals, lamps floating on water, their reflections trembling like fragile stars.

The river had been more than water.

It had been memory, ritual, life.

The smell reached him first.

Tejas slowed his steps.

It was sharp and sour, cutting through the warm air—rotting waste mixed with stagnant water and chemicals he could not identify. He stopped altogether, disbelief tightening his chest.

“No,” he murmured.

The path opened suddenly, and the river came into view.

Or what remained of it.

The wide, flowing body he remembered had shrunk into a narrow, sluggish channel. The water was dark, almost black in places, its surface coated with a greasy sheen that reflected the sun dully. Plastic bags clung to the banks like diseased growths. Broken bottles, food wrappers, torn cloth—everything people no longer wanted had found its way here.

The river did not move the way it once had.

It barely moved at all.

Tejas stood frozen, his mind struggling to reconcile memory with reality. This could not be the same place. It felt like standing at the grave of someone he had loved deeply, only to realize too late that he had never said goodbye.

He stepped closer.

The bank crumbled slightly under his weight, dry soil breaking apart in his hands as he steadied himself. Where reeds and grass once grew thick, only patches of brittle weeds remained. A dead fish floated near the edge, its pale belly turned upward, eyes dull and unseeing.

Tejas turned away sharply.

A wave of nausea rose in him—not just from the smell, but from something deeper. Guilt, perhaps. Or grief.

He had left.

That truth struck him with unexpected force.

He had left this place chasing opportunity, education, success. He had told himself he would return someday, that the river would still be here, flowing patiently as it always had.

Rivers, after all, were eternal.

Or so he had believed.

He crouched near the edge, ignoring the smell, and dipped a finger into the water. It felt warm—unnaturally so. When he pulled his hand back, an oily residue clung to his skin.

He wiped it on his jeans, his jaw tightening.

“How did this happen?” he whispered.

The river did not answer.

A sound behind him made him turn. An old man stood a short distance away, watching him quietly. His clothes were faded, his posture bent, but his eyes were sharp with recognition.

“Tejas?” the man said slowly, as if testing the name.

Tejas blinked. “Uncle Raghav?”

The old man smiled faintly. “You came back.”

Tejas nodded, though the word back felt strange now. “I… I didn’t know it had become like this.”

Raghav followed his gaze to the river and sighed—a long, tired sound. “It didn’t happen overnight.”

They stood side by side in silence, watching the water struggle to move.

“Factories upstream,” Raghav continued. “Waste dumped at night. Sewage lines redirected here. People stopped caring once the water stopped being useful to them.”

Tejas swallowed. “And no one stopped it?”

Raghav let out a dry laugh. “Some tried. They were told development has a cost.”

The word development echoed bitterly in Tejas’s mind.

He remembered school lessons that spoke of progress, growth, modernity. None of them had mentioned this—the slow death of something ancient and essential.

“I used to swim here,” Tejas said quietly.

“I know,” Raghav replied. “We all did.”