The self-sufficient man

(Or a tragic short story about his impossibility)

Today I tell everyone the truth about the self-sufficient man. It is hard to talk about someone you have hated with the very fiber of your being. But I must be the one to tell this story. I am the only one who can.

The self-sufficient man is the kind of nightmarish project that only a mad scientist could embark upon. It is believed that the self-sufficient man was invented in an underground lab funded by radical-communists, but the truth of the matter is that the self-sufficient man could not have been invented any more than the world could have been invented in an underground lab. Logic dictates that the self-sufficient man must have given birth to himself. If that sounds too improbable, then the self-sufficient man must have put himself together using whatever parts met his budget in the black-market.

We don’t know. The origins of the self-sufficient man are known only to God and maybe also the Communist intellectual who was bought off during the last election cycle.

The house where the self-sufficient man lived was right next to the intersection where the approach road to the most populated bar in the world meets the busiest highway in the world. Bikes are chewed up and spit out by trucks coming in at 200 kmph every few days on that street and yet I have never seen the self-sufficient man ever turn to look out the window. That man had no need for spectacle. He was probably investigating the greatest mystery on the planet, the advaitic horror of his I. Or he was doing nothing. I can’t tell. I just know that from the moment I was told about his existence, about what he was, about how he needed nothing else from us than to be left alone, I felt an anger building up inside me. I don’t know where the anger came from. But —

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Some people have theorized that he freely communes with demons. I am pretty sure he could summon the devil himself if he wanted, but I hardly believe he would have ever found that necessary. He had no need for conversation. He speaks no languages. (Now we know he screams) He has no need for words.

ISRO once tried recruiting him for their secretive Mars mission, because it is common knowledge that he needs no water, food, or even air to survive. He could have finally given us an edge over Elon Musk. But what charm would space-colonization hold for someone who had everything he wanted? Or who wanted nothing? I don’t know which one it was.

I am his greatest enemy. The first time I barged into his house, he was hanging from the ceiling fan upside down.

“What Nosferatu bullshit is this?” I shouted. I got him down from the ceiling, dragged him up the stairs, and then threw him out the window of the second floor.

I did this to him everyday for two years. Climbing down the stairs, I would find him slowly latching his feet onto the wings of the fan, shaking the dirt off his naked body(he has no need for clothes).

I tried everything. I spread the rumor that his skin was bullet proof. An unmarked car, which everyone knows was owned by the Mafia, pulled up right in front of the house, and kidnapped the self-sufficient man. News of the mafia doesn’t reach us all that easily. So we don’t know what happened but a few hours later the car screeched to a halt in front of the house, threw his body spinning through the gate, and then accelerated onto the highway as if possessed.

I truly tried everything. I spread the rumor that he was radiation-resistant, that he was the first man who could get pregnant, that he was telepathically in contact with the aliens in the Oort cloud, that he was a vampire. Every time one of these rumors took hold, he would be thrown into the back of an unmarked car and ferried away, only to be thrown back in front of the house, while the terrified driver put pedal to the metal.

He will not die unless he chooses to die. It is disheartening to hear, I know. But that is the truth.

Had I planned to burn down his house?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. I know nothing. I am an idiot.

But what I do know is two weeks ago at the PM of 7, I found myself standing at his door, having smeared his entire house with bucket-loads of kerosene. I saw him looking at me curiously from the fan as if even he was aware that something momentous was about to happen to the bond between us.

I made a thin line of kerosene as I slowly walked backwards to the gate of his house. I saw him drop to the ground, stand upright, and come to the door.

I smiled and said, “You think you are better than us, don’t you, you piece of shit?”

The fire was brilliant. It rose and rose as if it were trying to get a fingerhold on the sky to escape because it knew before any of us what was coming.

The vengeance of the self-sufficient man was about to begin.

The self-sufficient man made a sound, an impossible sound, the sound of the cardboard walls of heaven collapsing to reveal the truth. And in that moment it was over. He was self-sufficient no more. The great lid of his being had been slid open. The well was infinitely deep and the whole world and its tears would not fill it.

Everything burns here now all the time. The killing doesn’t stop. The crying doesn’t stop. He is probably saving me for the last. In the many months of our fighting him, I have seen the real face of evil. It is not him. It is us.

I have made my peace with the snuffing out of life on this planet. But sometimes when I am lying in bed, I wonder about the nature of peace: his peace, I mean. The depth, expanse, geometry of peace that he had before I took it away from him. The peace he had hanging upside down alone in that house which kept him from wanting to eat up the planet in large bites. Was that peace inseparable from love? You think maybe — it had been love — Did I take his silent love for the world to mean indifference? Did I take it and turn it into the unspeakable weapon that will end human life on this planet in a few days? What if instead of me someone else had found him? Someone capable of understanding his love.

It was a magnificent thing I killed. There is no coming back from it. I just wish I had killed it in my name and not in the name of humanity.