It's six minutes past two. In less than twelve hours from now, I'm due to present my second semester Mid-term paper infront of my co-advisor and a bunch of finest research scholars in cinema across the country. 231 words and three nights of crying later, I'm rendered useless. I can't write a word or for that matter, watch these documentaries (that I proposed to work on, no intervention from anyone. The beauty of Grad school).

The problem with approaching self reflexive documentary work is that you need to have balls of steel and heart of stone to not be personally affected by it. The sign of good art is to be able to shake you. With this contradiction, I could easily curate my list of favourite films as a cinema scholar/ defunct in-making filmmaker, however, my mid term will play spoilsport tonight.

Either way, your case doesn't help you, if you make a stellar documentary about the dilemma of coming out to your parents, excel in everything, have the touch of magic and die two years later in a car accident. How on earth do I keep a straight face talking about someone with great potential, a fantastic home-video footage documentary and deal with the fact that this person is no more. In the second documentary, the artist describes his terminally ill sibling and the constant cloud of gloom in their household, his coming to terms with HIV and the grief. Again, tear jerker, not once but each time.

I think this is my cue to exit the world tonight and see if I can hold back on crying buckets in the presentation tomorrow. As it is, the hormones are causing an embarrassment to everyone I've met this past week. I cried in public while meeting a friend, just when she came to see me off, I've cried during two movies I saw in theatre this week (one which is so mediocre that it reminded me of my class 6 report card) and once while watching one of the documentary's.

Yeah, I'm chumming. Should be back to being a cold hearted bitch in forty eight hours or so.