Fate may have been cruel to her, for right from her childhood she has been suffering form one or other form of ailment.

But that has not deterred the poet within her from writing. ``I may have written nearly 3,000 poems till date,'' she claims.

A born poet, she, however, took to serious writing at the age of 15. ``After the floods, when the moon looked beautiful, I wrote the first four lines of a poem in Hindi,'' Choksi recollects. She, however, does not remember what she wrote.

When she was about five-years-old, Choksi sustained head injuries in an accident with a bicycle. Then she was admitted to hospital where the doctors performed an operation for appendicitis, which apparently was not what was bothering her. Nausea, falls, spasms became a part of her life. A bout of brain fever kept her bed-ridden for two months.

Recently, she recovered from 30 per cent burn injuries. But the courage which she displayed, after her night gown accidentally caught fire from a stove was remarkable. Choksi not only poured water on herself but also went to the ground floor to open the gate to seek her neighbours' help.

Despite her ill-health, poetry has kept her going. ``I owe this to my mother Kantaben and Pandit Lalit Kishore Sharma, who encouraged me write poems in Hindi,'' she says.

Reading was always her hobby and she finished reading all the books in the children's section of Vadodara's Central Library. No wonder, she took her SSC examinations and various national-level Hindi tests, in spite of being unwell. Illness did not permit her to study further.

Recipient of an award by Kendriya Hindi Nirdeshalaya, Government of India, for her first collection of poems Bhav Nirzar published in 1982, Choksi's mother was her first critic. After her death in 1979, followed by Pandit Sharma's death in 1985, she says she has become her own critic. ``I make the necessary changes after writing a poem,'' she adds.

Her works have found place in several magazines, including Dharmayug, and she has been acclaimed by Asmita Mahila Manch and Gujarat Refinery among several other organisations. ``Whether my poems are published or not, they make my life,''she says. ``Had I not been writing, I would have died''.