When your parent fails to recognise you?

I just watched the film ‘Maine Gandhi ko nahin mara’. In the film, Anupam Kher is going through a psychological problem in which he feels that he has been jailed for killing Mahatma Gandhi. Urmila plays his daughter, who struggles to make his father normal. The acting of all actors is fabulous. While watching the movie, I suddenly remembered my school days not-so-close friend, Shraddha. We both were learning music together. One day after a music competition she suddenly started crying. I could not understand what had happened for she had performed extremely well in the competition. I asked her for the reason and she said, ‘My parents don’t have time for me, your parents encourage you so much’. I thought that her parents could not make it to the competition due to busy schedules that is why she was upset. I started consoling her. But then what she said shocked me. I never realized that Shraddha was going through so much misery in her life. She told me that her mother was psychologically ill since 2 years. Matters had worsened so much that she was not even able to recognize her daughters. She never felt hungry, did toilets on bed and was gradually forgetting everything. Till one year her father remained uncooperative and was not ready to show his wife to a psychiatrist due to society fear. Shraddha on seeing her mother’s bad condition fought with her father and took her mother to a specialist. Her father did not even pay the fees initially. So she used her savings. Later after lot of convincing her father agreed to help.

For the next two years I did not meet Shraddha as our schools had changed and she was no more coming to the music classes. Meanwhile I heard that she had started smoking in college and also had a boyfriend with whom she broke after some months. Later I heard that she had left college and no one had any clue about her. One day I saw her at the music classes and was curious to know about her mother. She told me that her mother was recovering and her father and sister were taking care of her as she had already married. She had also resumed classes and was keen on completing her graduation.