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.
All posts tagged Pakistan
Journey from Karachi to England
Posted by matindurrani on December 14, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/12/14/journey-from-karachi-to-england/
Live at Government College Lahore: part 3
The period Saeed spent at Government College Lahore betwen 1946 and 1953 were, he says, “some of the happiest of my life” and also “very formative”. This section of Saeed’s memoirs looks at some of the close friends he made there, including Arshad Ali Tour, Inamul Haq and Zafar Ismail, who — like Saeed — was to later study physics at Cambridge.
Click the link below to read more.
Posted by matindurrani on September 27, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/09/27/live-at-government-college-lahore-part-3/
Partition of India
The summer of 1947, shortly before India gained independence from Britain and split into two nations, was one of the worst ever periods in the country’s history, with riots, killing and burning throughout the country on a horrendous scale. In this part of Saeed’s memoirs, he describes the tensions in the city of Lahore at the time — as well as the “moment of great joy, elation and pride when, at the stroke of midnight between 13th and 14th August 1947, we heard in the stately and pure-washed language of the announcer Shakeel Ahmed: This is the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, Assalam-u Alaikum Radio Pakistan, Lahore, Shakeel Ahmed at your service. Pakistan Zindabad.”
“I can still”, writes my father, “vividly remember the thrill that went through my body on hearing that historic announcement.”
Click the link below to read more.
Posted by matindurrani on September 20, 2013
https://saeed-durrani-memoirs.net/2013/09/20/partition-of-india/
Saeed Durrani (1929-2018) 