The last few weeks have been particularly trying for me, and unfortunately, whenever I have multiple, overlapping deadlines, I tend to sleep late—or not at all. They’ve invented a cool phrase for it, “pulling an all-nighter” for the abuse we do to our bodies when we don’t sleep enough or skip sleep altogether. I think I’m an insomniac.

The worst was, when I slept just two hours a night last week—from 7 am to 9 am. I had multiple deadlines to meet before I left for Toronto to introduce the “Satyajit Ray, His Contemporaries and Legacy” series that I’ve curated at the Toronto International Film Festival’s TIFF Cinematheque from August 4-10. I’d been working on Canadian time for some weeks, and alongside, it was incredibly stressful trying to get both a Canadian visa and US visa in time. The Canadian visa was three heart attacks territory, reaching me literally hours before my departure, like Shah Rukh Khan pulling a racing Kajol on board in DDLJ, after the train has already started from the station.