Human geography has yet to broach the question of suicide in India, despite much to offer. This paper has two aims: to draw attention to the materiality of self-destruction, and to review the literature on India’s pesticide suicides. Every suicide involves a partnership between the decision to end one’s life and the method that will produce death. The practice of self-destruction, be it hanging, drowning, jumping from heights, or swallowing pesticide, is material. Farmers’ suicides in India are hotly contested,¹ highly politicised,² and often diagnosed by social scientists as a symptom of ‘agrarian crisis’.³ The social science literature, however, has largely overlooked a fundamental element of suicide – its materiality. Pesticide ingestion is the primary method of suicide in the subcontinent, and is purportedly most prevalent in agrarian settings.⁴ This paper points toward an approach where human geographers can contribute to this vast and bewildering issue.