Save Me from My Well Wishers

Golden planes
Gutters – drains
Sometime pours
Sometime rains

Smooth gears
No more fears
Gray by ears
What tears?

Gifted men
Back to pen
Never know
Never will
When is when

Hai Hai
Hydrology
Never, never
Eulogy
Always there
Never fear

Geriatric
You say?
Goes merrily
On his way
Wonder drugs
Or pill?
Ah, the gall
Of the Gill

Ain’t no
Bhag-wan
Just total
Pahalwan
Cowboy hats
RV van
Sure he can
Oh man!

Finds his groove
We approve!

Gill sahib: happy retirement. hope now you can write more science articles.

hamidm: your father-in-law was in the army corps of engineers!! so was mine. They probably served together. not that i wish to have real life intrude into sacred chowk life.

gill sahib,

......... congratulations, but ........... based on a 100% sample size of three, your wife will want you out of the house in about 3 months - either that, or she will kill you and you won`t have to worry about it, or you will kill her and end up behind bars .......... sorry, but that`s the way it is .........

......... my father-in-law, a civil engineer like you, retired from the army corps of engineers at 58 and after a couple of weeks went to work for the national highway authority ....... he retired at sixty and sat around for a couple of months interfering in all kinds of business that he had no business in .......... he went around the house turning off the lights, fighting with the gardner, fighting with four and five year old grand kids........ and one day he entered the kitchen to help - my mother-in-law almost killed him so he went to work on the karakoram highway as a consultant - everyone was happy ......... in a couple of years, at about sixty five, he retired again and everyone was very unhappy, including him ............. this time he fought with ten and twelve year old grand kids who fought back; the naukarani quit and the gardner had a heart attack; the neighbors moved and his wife tried to kill him again ............. so he quit retirement and went to work as a consultant for some engineering firm out of karachi supervising world bank projects ......... he worked in the field till he was seventy two when they gave him a desk job in islamabad but he continued to show up on projects in interior sindh and baluchistan until they got a restraining order against him ......... finally, last year, at the age of seventy five, they retired him ............ he is really upset and hopping mad and my mother-in-law is thinking of running away - her arthritis and other illnesses holds her back ! ........... every now and then he puts on a tie in the morning and disappears for hours - rumor has it that he is interviewing for a job !

.......... good luck !

Enjoy your retirement.

I remember when my dad retired (a scary 25 years ago) when I was just a kid. I lost count of the number of folks who would sadly recount all the hale and hearty retirees who dropped dead days after retirement because they just didn`t know what to. Retirement started to equal death to me. Scared me senseless. I had nightmares, checking on my dad at night to make sure he was still around. He stays active and busy and he is in his 80`s. I wish the same for you :-).

No, seriously, what are your plans after you retire?

Oh come on Gill sahib! You can`t quit engineering! A civil engineer never quits engineering!

*plays emotional Tchaikovsky symphony*

If I were you, I`d start writing books about engineering. The post-retirement phase is, in my opinion, the ideal time to compile your lifes hard work and preserve it for future generations to read.

Just my point of view really, don`t want to `pressurize` you in any way! ;-)

Have fun!

gill sahib:

don`t kid yourself:)

there is only one retirement that matters...the one from life!

wish you good health and good writing

rgds

t

congratulations and enjoy! you are an inspiration.

Gill Saheb:

I took a pre-retirement course before my retirement and there is one particular piece of advice by a counsellor that I remember well. She said,`` All your life you had to work because you had to; now you work only if and because you want to.``

From your articles, it is clear that you loved what you did and so this situation probably did not apply to you. Still, it will be nice to know on a cold wintry morning that you dont have to go to work if you dont want to.

Congratulations on your retirement!

your article reminded me of similar article ``beemaar paRnay par`` which was in our Hindi book of class 9th(I dont remember the name of the author...I read it 30 years ago). The theme was similar--how everybody comes up with some advice at such a time...is this something peculiar to south asians only?...but whatever,it is a very interseting attribute...and amusing too.
I am sure ,you wont get bored as you have such wide range of intersts.your literary creativity will shine even more now and we will get a lot to read.
All the best for your new phase of life.

have a great time.

However, now that you do not have your regular professional responsibilities....you can write more for chowk and you informative articles are a treat. Heavy read but a treat and they make more sense than many of the pages put up here in the name of literature!

keep them coming

Gill Saab:

This had me smiling. (I must confess the only time I have done so while reading you...I do not understand a word about quantum physics and I do not possess a scientific temperament, ergo, no logic!)

I think you should just mail the links of all your articles to your former colleagues (and you have a whole body of work), so that they know you never really had the time, or you could make time for everything.

I met a Chowkie who was visiting Mumbai recently and he talked about `semi retirement` -- it was a naughty reference to my laidback attitude. Many like him who lead very active professional lives are seeking a route where they find more time for themselves and their families.

I shall offer you no kindness for you are way beyond that, and only hope you write at least an occasional article for those of us who do not fathom the marvels of atoms and neorons.

PS: In India, most government offices would traditionally give the retiring person a wrist watch, just when s/he needed it least (govt. workers are notorious here for not being punctual)!

Wishing you a lot of fun and hoping you now watch the stars with a different vision :)

Regards,
Farzana

Mr Gill I am amazed by your productiveness, how did u manage your time so as to fulfill your job requirements, familial duties and simultaneously write researched articles?

some pointers please.