After shining as a physics student in Lahore, Saeed’s time at Cambridge University was markedly different – suddenly he was one of many top students, not the only one. In this part of his memoirs, he describes life at Cambridge, including his “quite stupid approach” to research, which included being too “idiotic” to admit he didn’t know how particular experimental equipment worked, turning up in the lab at 3pm after spending hours at night on advanced mathematics in his room with the gas fire blazing, and feeling “embarrassed and ashamed” after getting pump oil into a cyclotron, which a technician then had to spend a full day and a half repairing.
All posts for the month December, 2013
My time at Cambridge: part 1
Posted by matindurrani on December 14, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/12/14/my-time-at-cambridge-part-1/
Tales of Coincidences
What are the chances of you going on holiday to Madrid, seeing a stranger in a crowded street, deciding to strike up a conversation with that person, only to find out you go to the same university, that you live on the same street and that you in fact are living in their very room while they are away for the summer? It sounds an unlikely tale, but this is precisely what happened to Saeed in the summer of 1956 – in fact he puts the chances of it taking place as small as one in a billion billion. However, it is only one of several strange coincidences during Saeed’s like, which you can read about here. Others include bumping into an old friend, Zafar Ismail at a restaurant in London, and coming across another buddy, Raheel, in a street in Munich.
Posted by matindurrani on December 14, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/12/14/tales-of-coincidences/
Journey from Karachi to England
When Saeed Durrani left Pakistan for England in 1953, he travelled as most people did at the time, which was by cruise ship from Karachi to Liverpool. These days international travel is a rather humdrum experience, but back then a three-week sea journey was full of adventure, fun and amusement as you can find out from this extract from the memoirs. Of particular note is the story concerning Saeed’s notoriously request-happy Uncle Nisar, who was then based at the Pakistani embassy in Cairo. As the ship was due to call at the Egyptian port, Uncle Nisar wrote to his sister (Saeed’s mother) instructing him to bring “a few things”, which included a sewing machine, a couple of canisters of ghee, a sack of Panjabi rice, three sacks of dhal, and a heap of other odds and ends. This section of the memoirs also includes an account of Saeed’s various embarassing social faux-pas during the cruise’s fancy-dress ball.
Posted by matindurrani on December 14, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/12/14/journey-from-karachi-to-england/
Saeed Durrani (1929-2018) 