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10 Jun, 1908

Cinemaazi remembers Gulab on her birth anniversary

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Yesterday Tomorrow - Nargis

02 Jun, 2026 | Archival Reproductions by Cinemaazi

"My yesterdays are like a beautiful dream with shadows of sadness," says Nargis (above ). "Tomorrow is also a very beautiful dream, and in my new hope I am sure to 'remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire'".

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Unborn Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday. Why fret about them if Today be sweet", sang Omar Khayyam. But what of the present? What is today? It is the product of all our yesterdays, the yesterdays we made, and of our tomorrows, the tomorrows we so fondly hope to fashion according to our wish, but which come just as they please–despite all "the best laid plans of mice and men".

Today is the union of our yesterdays and tomorrows-it reflects back to us the united images of both. So when we say we live for today alone, remember it is made up of the shadows of yesterday and the sunshine of tomorrow.

My yesterdays are like a beautiful dream with shadows of sadness. Portions of it are vivid, as though it occurred only an hour ago, and the rest is hazy, lost in the fog of memory.

"The finished pattern of yesterday and the tomorrow fabric of tomorrow make today what it is," says a well-known star in this article.

I can see myself, a little girl, asking a friend to give me a push on the tennis-court at the Queen Mary High School so that I could fall and hurt myself, have my right arm bandaged and put in a sling, and could stay away from the history test next day!

I can see myself crying bitterly on my last day at school. There is a party for us on that day. We have finished school and we are going out into the world. Crying bitterly, I ask myself; "Why are there only nine standards in school? Why can't there be more, so that I can spend more happy years in school?"

I can see myself wandering like a lost soul through the corridors and classrooms, dwelling fondly on the memories of days and hours and moments, some happy and others sad, spent there, caressingly passing my hands over the chairs and desks, and nestling against the walls outside the classroom where I used to be punished.

Leaving school meant leaving childhood behind, a goodly portion of my yesterdays and a vital part of myself. Of such yesterdays was my girlhood made, and I came from the dreamy languor of the years at school into another world.

I can see myself, on December 31, 1943, at the Roxy Cinema, Bombay, on the occasion of the release of my first film ''Taqdeer''. I went there in a frock, a shy and awkward girl. I was Fatima Rashid. Nobody knew me. For all they cared, I was just another member of the audience. When I came out of the auditorium two and a half hours later, I was Nargis- a total strange to myself, yet known to everybody.

Yes, it is a strange world, and strangers and strange persons people it.

I can see myself praying to God to take my life and spare that of my beloved lather. My father was very ill and dying. I remember vividly pleading with him: "How can you leave me all alone like this and go away when you love me so much?" But those who must go cannot stay, and I see myself again alone in my room- in the same bed in which my mother used to sleep. She is dead, too. Now there is nothing else except haunting memories and the echoes of their voices to guide me through life.

I am running eagerly towards my tomorrows with open arms, smiling with confidence that every tomorrow is going to be a rosy dream.

And I can see myself working day and night. There is nothing else to life but work, work, work... picture after picture-good, bad and indifferent. I am tossed about by the tumultuous waves of emotions. I am immersed in creative work, straining every nerve in a maddening quest for perfection. I am in a daze. It is a crazy rush. I am trying to race time itself. But time is always one jump ahead of me, of all of us. It is futile to race against the inexorable hour-hand, minute-hand and second-hand of the clock.

I feel tired and exhausted. I lie down to rest and the mocking caravan of yesterdays passes before my eyes.

And there was hope again-from the inborn strength within us which lives us the power to break the shackles of the bleak and promiseless Today and relegate it to the shadowy realms of yesterday. There was the daily emerging from the depths of those yesterdays to look up to the sharp heights of Tomorrow. And so another dream began, the dream of tomorrow, and today lay suspended in space...

*Nargis as she appears in the highly dramatic role allotted to her in Mehboob's "Mother India"*

Tomorrow is a very, very beautiful dream, and in my new hope I am sure to "remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire".

There were times when I worked feverishly in eighteen pictures at a time, and there were times when I did only one or two pictures in a year. I realise the futility of doing too little and too much. Now I want to strike the golden mean and work in only a few pictures a year, with themes which offer the very best, dramatically and histrionically.

I have outgrown the need to play ordinary roles, and I find that not only my fans but also film makers do not expect me to play such parts any more, because, when I am approached with new assignments, there is always something unusual or extraordinary in the roles.

But what about tomorrow in general? I see brightness everywhere. I see Life only a short distance away. I see myself going towards it, embracing it, and I see that it is not running away from me. I see a land of peace and plenty, of better. understanding among people, a land where honest work is appreciated, where no jealousies exist and no evil dwells.

If an artist must have time to work, she must also have time to appreciate the fruits of that work. I want to take it easy in future. I want to complete the pictures I have in hand by August next year.

But when such thoughts rush into my mind, I wish they would come at a slower pace, because I remember my yesterdays-how there was a time when I, too, planned what my tomorrows should be. But tomorrow comes, willy-nilly exactly as it likes and not as one has planned. I have learned from experience that it is not wise to try to fit tomorrow into a frozen mould.

Tomorrow is insubstantial, glorious like a dream, and yet so full of promise that I shall look forward to accepting it exactly as it comes.

This article was published in 'Filmfare' magazine's 25 October 1957 edition written by Nargis.
The images and captions are from the original article.

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Yesterday Tomorrow - Nargis

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