It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the word for yesterday, kal, was also the word for tomorrow. In Bengali one needed an adjective, or relied on the tense of a verb, to distinguish what had already happened from what would be.

On one occasion in lecture the word bella happened to be mentioned. At this a member of the class, whose manners were clearly not sans reproche, observed to his neighbour, in a voice intended to be heard, “My girl’s name’s Bella.” At which came from the professor as quick as lightning, “Ah! Bella—horrida bella.”

"My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting."

[W]hat we call yesterday is self-contained and has its experience of being yesterday, and today has memories of yesterday; and therefor I say that it's later... but each is completely self-contained, and there's no reason why you should put one... here, and another one there...

We made love like Wednesday and Thursday, only Thursday wasn’t always on top. Her name was Yesterday, and today will always remind me of her.

Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.

According to us, the night belongs to the previous day.

PROCRASTINATION

The day after tomorrow, yes, only the day after tomorrow ...
Tomorrow I'll start thinking about the day after tomorrow,
Maybe I could do it then; but not today ...
No, nothing today; today I can't.
The confused persistence of my objective subjectivity,
The sleep of my real life, intercalated,
Anticipated, infinite weariness — I'm worlds too weary to catch a trolley — That kind of soul ...
Only the day after tomorrow ...
Today I want to prepare,
I want to prepare myself for tomorrow, when I'll think about the next day ...
That'd be decisive.
I've already got the plans sketched out, but no, today I'm not making any
plans ...
Tomorrow's the day for plans.
Tomorrow I'll sit down at my desk to conquer the world;
But I'll only conquer the world the day after tomorrow ...
I feel like crying,
I suddenly feel like crying a lot, inside ...
That's all you're getting today, it's a secret, I'm not talking.
Only the day after tomorrow ...
When I was a kid the Sunday circus diverted me every week.
Today all that diverts me is the Sunday circus from all the weeks of my
childhood ...
The day after tomorrow I'll be someone else,
My life will triumph,
All my real qualities — intelligent, well-read, practical — Will be gathered together in a public notice ...
But the public notice will go up tomorrow ...
Today I want to sleep, I'll make a fair copy tomorrow ...
For today, what show will repeat my childhood to me?
Even if I buy tickets tomorrow,
The show would still really be the day after tomorrow ...
Not before ...
The day after tomorrow I'll have the public pose I will have practiced
tomorrow.
The day after tomorrow I'll finally be what I could never be today.
Only the day after tomorrow ...
I'm sleepy as a stray dog's chill.
I'm really sleepy.
Tomorrow I'll tell you everything, or the day after tomorrow ...
Yes, maybe only the day after tomorrow ...
By and by ...
Yes, the old by and by ...

Every today is at the same time both a cradle and a shroud: a shroud for yesterday, a cradle for tomorrow. Today, yesterday, and tomorrow are equally near to one another, and equally far. They are generations, they are grandfathers, fathers, and grandsons. And grandsons invariably love and hate the fathers; the fathers invariably hate and love the grandfathers. Today is doomed to die — because yesterday died, and because tomorrow will be born. Such is the wise and cruel law. Cruel, because it condemns to eternal dissatisfaction those who already today see the distant peaks of tomorrow; wise, because eternal dissatisfaction is the only pledge of eternal movement forward, eternal creation. He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned to a pillar of salt, has already sunk into the earth and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy: tomorrow is an inevitable heresy of today, which has turned into a pillar of salt, and to yesterday, which has scattered to dust. Today denies yesterday, but is a denial of denial tomorrow. This is the constant dialectic path which in a grandiose parabola sweeps the world into infinity. Yesterday, the thesis; today, the antithesis, and tomorrow, the synthesis.

Yesterday is but a dream, And tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. — KĀLIDĀSA, Sanskrit dramatist

Yesterday is but a dream, And tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. — KĀLIDĀSA, Sanskrit dramatist and poet, ca. fifth century CE

Time, in the Sanskrit, is called Kala. He is a destroyer and also a renovator. Yama, the lord of death, although powerful, is not so much so as Kala, for "until the time has come Yama can do nothing." The moments as they fly past before us carrying all things with them in long procession, are the atoms of Time, the sons of Kala. Years roll into centuries, centuries into cycles, and cycles become ages; but Time reigns over them all, for they are only his divisions.

La noche pertenece al día anterior en nuestro sentimiento.

Time (kaal) is the art (kala) of being.