Surichi a practicing doctor in the U.K, took birth in a humble scholarly family in New Delhi and it is very late that she focused on ‘the self’ for years and in the process, re-discovered intrinsic creative faculty with a hesitant but cautious incline toward ‘the inner self’, the consciousness. ‘The self’ that inspires and tells the soul inside to come up with the most secreted truths about life that make it worth living and substantial. ‘Snowdrops - Blossom To The Spring Within’ a White Falcon Publication 2021 is her first brilliant debut collection.

Poet looks out for aptness in lexis and stretches the words to logical substance and in the process, she confronts defiance, caution and some hope and this leads of vulnerable regions where to find focused swivels turns out a taxing situation. The poet in Suruchi does it ably and springs at flickers of luminosity and trust as she wishes to fathom its depths. Her lyrics offer some moments of stealthy insightful character, unpeeling a few slender imperceptible layers of fizzing sensations flowing in the veins silently constituting the frame of many lyrics. It happens when she abstractedly loiters in natural ambiance, as ‘calming sights’ prove comforting.

Each individual nurses wishes to live in transferred joys and experiences that strengthen longing poignantly. It is good to reflect on optimistic life even if you dream of a life in natural vicinity. Suruchi Arora is a doctor, who loves to traverse lands of spirituality possibly to locate harmony that exists in each one but one fails to fix it. ‘Snowdrops’ suggests tenderness, smoothness and extreme subtlety of feelings and experiences she gathers while she looks around and deliberates in an effort to transmit such feelings that created stir a few minutes ago. Such undefined occurrences of past fail to capitulate the precise impact of feelings and experiences. A visit to a cheery sister is warm as she figures out her joy and pleasure. Her words ‘I wish I could have/ a life like yours!’ are emotive.

The memories chase her when she drives back.
If you really love this life,
Can you defy the fears of mind?
The give take, the losses you make,
To follow your heart, until you reach
the heaven I live
the heaven you like?

Now, this illusion vis-à-vis heaven is something that fills you with a kind of nectar imagined. If ‘How are you? 5’ hints at indefinite and uncertain inner confusion, here to reach reality remains away as vague exploration into the personal sincerity disturbs. It connects and pushes away proximity between the relations as well. None is sincere in the answer ‘good’ but in ‘That Lonely Child 7’, a compassionate heart opens up at the sight of ‘abandoned, uncared’ child, begging for gentle care.

No philosophy or moralizing, or craze for rummaging thoughts exists. It is to revivify experiences and that is the strength of poet Arora. She talks of normal encounters with ‘the self’ and thereafter, relates these to the outside world and focuses on an array of running into with different people.

Poems are mostly personal in character and depiction of experiences permeated with emotions and fragile thoughts connected with the ethereal areas, taunt and puzzle. You understand the depths and try to identify ‘the self’ with these indefinable experiences but still cannot catch hold of the essence a sensitive poet wishes to convey. You sit aghast and try to figure out the intensity of poet’s feelings. You are empathetic but you strike your head for the meaning goes beyond grasp.

If you fail to understand what the poet says, know, it is your fault. You can understand this poetry only if you feel the presence of multiple assaults of emotions and thoughts with unbridled sensations inside trying to wriggle out in concrete form. It happens in each poet but it is unfortunate that he or she stays indifferent. It is beauty as well as strength of Arora’s poetry.

It is the inner world of the poet, which is the area of her travels, enquiries and possible conclusions about life and existence, where she allures a poetry lover. She succeeds, holds his finger like a mother and then, leaves him to find out the green pastures of meaning like an abandoned calf. In her case, she reflects on many issues pertaining to the inner woman, and so she aspires to attain perfection in the art of life, which eludes her each time (My Castle 16).

Here, she as an ordinary person hopes to achieve solidity in life and the infinite sky is the limit of ambitions.
I stress and pant
I run and plan,
I compete and fight,
I pray and scheme.
Now, I want my castle
Bigger than them all.
What castle could ever be,
Higher than the endless sky!

Simple verses are innocuous, esoteric and mystical monologues, and attract as she walks on ‘the wandering path’ 19 along with the pup whose soul perhaps she ignores or is it that the pup knows her soul?

Unique eeriness and inconclusiveness haunts rather pleases as the protagonist struggles to reach destination 20, thinks of the goal, gauges the conflicts and the summit, and suddenly she realizes she had already reached the pinnacle but the question keeps alive ‘When Will I Get There!’

Her metaphoric journey in the thought process takes you to the inside of everybody. ‘The Calling of the Soul’ 22 is symbolic where after taking birth, a living being goes back to roots to die even as the life of fish salmon, inspires her to listen to the calling of the soul. Let life flow effortlessly as nature continues to function without any stress or burden, and that way, one lives life in peace!

Questions of identity and location in life often disturb many people, and the creative artists are not an exception. All anxieties relate to survival, hopes and positioning in life amidst tribulations and indefiniteness about life in current existential issues where a man wrestles with anarchic times. Through the life of a leaf that the strong wind carries away to unknown destination one wants to know its destination (Where Am I, 29) in disastrous times when nature appears furious, and so the poet appears to pray for relief and at once, gets the answer.
‘Where am I?’ screams the leaf in a muddle.
‘Exactly where you are meant to be!’
Says a voice from a faraway tree.

A leaf, at this moment, is voice of a man in awe-inspiring and doubtful situational crisis of existing times. The question again visits in ‘Meant to Be 34,’ where she puts a query.
I gazed at the sky and asked aloud,
‘Where am I?’ with anger and doubt.
‘Exactly where you are meant to be’
The voice was crisp and clear as sky…

The answer is unequivocally straight.
Exactly where you are meant to be.
This isn’t the heaven you dreamed of, my child,
But when did you ever hear me say,
That this is where you are meant to say.

However, she is optimistic and reaffirms realistically that ‘Accepting life as it is / I could live in bliss of trust. 30’ and so she connects ‘the self’ with the humankind and tells everyone that she is not different and that joys and sufferings chase her too, like any man.

Poet’s creative and functional energies are directed towards optimistic outlook on life and if there are a few irritations and glitches, which are bound to emerge in due course of time, these are transitory phenomena the launching pads for doing something better to make life reminiscent. It is better to concentrate on the moment one has in hand instead of thinking of past or future. This is best time where you can catch hold of life and its joy that leads to eternal happiness, for you ought to know that there was nothing better before and will never be better in future (?).

To think of the unseen and unknown is sheer waste of life. She has something to tell (‘I Have Better Things to Do, 44-45’) when she observes philosophically perhaps, an intellectual anxiety that speaks of perennial truth if a man comprehends complexities of life.

‘Whatever I do, / if I do with attention, / I give it my acceptance, / love and care –/This is when all I do, / becomes an act of unlimited joy, / This is when I am fulfilled in mundane /And do not fret about better things to do.’

The thought of vague hopes and seriousness in temper about life’s concerns is discerned when she expectantly says in Mindfulness 46.
I notice the sun
winking at me…
Yet, released to beauty
in a singly moments.
Could I do this every day?

Such streams of thoughts continue to guide the poet to areas of faith in the goodness of life and speak of her strong point. Only a woman of extreme sensitivity could travel from regions of darkness in life to brightness for she has a whole generation before her eyes of which she appears to be lighthouse.

An inveterate optimist she is and whatever she observes outside, it fills her with immense ‘Love Forever’. Here, she enjoys celebrating the blessings of nature, for it gives you the feel of some romance beyond the horizon, a simple imagination that runs amuck but gives thrills of a lifetime.

The rising sun, the blushing earth - it is all mysterious when glowing crimson captivates. It is a relation of love in stages between the sun and the earth in different colours one has glimpses in Love Forever 48. It is an eternal feeling of love and bliss when one situates ‘the self’ in nature and enjoys its distinct silence, at times melodic, or thunderous at another time, and still strident in movement
A glowing soul
drenched in love…
Lost in that moment.
I forgot myself,
and turned red with Earth and sun.
Bliss forever.

A journey it is that conveys the eternal truth that from living in darkness and night with grace takes one to a glorious dawn. It is powerful meandering of the poet into memoirs in split up snippets, experiences and impressions defying grip of lexis and scenarios, a person evokes, feels and restores to life. Thus, it offers indistinctly peerless contentment. At this ephemeral moment, it is redundant to unearth meaning, enough it is if you enjoy. Know that life moves between meaning and non-meaning and it turns out its concentrate.

On the other hand, lyrics like ‘Pray For Me’, Wounded Healers’… reveal softness but extreme compassion and an intent to do something for those not so privileged, let know her social consciousness with a philosophic touch. She is economical and laconic in the use of words but mild, and says effectively in little verses. ‘A Prayer 86’ is a remarkable simple verse that sums up essence of life as the origin of everybody is love eternal than why hate.
Every carrot I peel,
every floor I sweep,
every person I help,
every little thing I do –
When I do with all my heart,
an act of love,
a prayer that reaches
the source of all.

She is a poet who logically wishes to find her identity in a miasma of multiplicity of creation that ultimately reduced to a tiny particle may be a little wave or a little living thing ‘Ocean in a Wave’. Here, she connects ‘the self’ with the Cosmic Person, the Great Spirit, the Time or say the great god finding distinction between a wave and the ocean where even a wave contains the whole ocean or say an individual soul embodies the Supreme as well as the Universe. Suruchi appears to believe that ‘the soul’ is the essence if one forgets its embodied form.

She avers that a man in ‘his subtle - invisible self’ lives in living beings and all beings live in him. If one comprehends its spirit, it would lead to the divine land even on earth.

Enjoy her tiny lyrics and you will feel the nectar-like flow within and then, live to perpetuate this experience. Many verses –You Live Through Me, God, I am the One and many more affirm her faith in ‘the inner self’, which one ought to elevate and it is a state when one turns out a saint. Without sermonizing, she is emphatic in constructing a new man during her lifetime and this is the strength of elegant poetic endeavour.

Consensus in images is a revelation of what an individual witnesses and experiences about past that merges in the present. When one reads her poetry, such feelings crop up and give unique excitement where reading of verses turns into emotions and solicitous awareness carefree. Images in lyrics appear enjoyable but go beyond intended meaning. Abstract word-paintings and sketches give visual pleasure and one finds meaning in one’s own way with or without import. Freshness in phrase, simplicity in expression and technique, intrinsic classiness and innovative approach make this collection beautiful and unforgettable.