Nostalgic Nuggets: One of the greatest actresses of all times

For a heroine, whose last film was released in 1967, her name and fame have endured longer than the three-decade tenure that she spent onscreen and much later. Despite a very short life of 51 years, Nargis (1929-1981), whose 91st birth anniversary falls today was an incredible woman of her time.

Born Fatima Rashid in Calcutta, she was not just an actress who had commercial successes and critical appreciation for her skills. She was a social worker who worked with charitable organizations and was also a Rajya Sabha MP. Her offscreen alliance with Raj Kapoor, which was a great subject for the cine press of the 1950s ended only when she married her 'Mother India' co-star, Sunil Dutt, another leading light of Hindi cinema. Her performance in that film of Mehboob Khan is of course, the stuff of legend.

It was tragic she could not see the launch of her son Sanjay Dutt's career in 1981. She died on May 3 that year, four days before Sanjay made his debut on the big screen.