L ike many mothers and daughters, Madhuri was very close to her daughter, Vinita, aged 15. She took great pride in the fact that she and her daughter were more friends than mother and child. Vinita frequently told her mother of the escapades of her school friends, in the knowledge that she would never let on that she had done so. Most of the tales she told her mother were harmless enough, but even so, Madhuri always pretended ignorance when Vinita’s friends were around.

But then, one day, Vinita told her mother of how anxious she was about one of her gang who had started taking drugs. Madhuri was shattered to hear this. Veena and Vinita had been together since kindergarten, and she was very fond of the girl. This long association had led to Vinita’s parents getting to know Veena’s father and mother socially. Madhuri knew that she must warn Veena’s mother, so that a rescue operation could be immediately mounted. But if she did so, would she not be betraying Vinita’s confidence and jeopardising their friendship?

What should she do? For days Madhuri agonised over the dilemma she faced but in the end she decided to keep her own counsel. She salved her guilty conscience by rationalising her motives for keeping quiet. After all, she told herself, it was really none of her business and Veena’s parents would probably resent her interference. But the real reason for her silence was the special relationship she enjoyed with Vinita.

“We are more friends than mother and daughter,” she explained in a rare moment of honesty. “She trusts me implicitly and there is no way that I can risk having this change. If I talk to Veena’s parents, they (and Veena) will know that Vinita has told me, and Vinita will never forgive me.”

Madhuri and Vinita are undeniably close. But can a friendship that takes precedence above the dictates of one’s conscience be forged between a mother and a teenage daughter who still needs parental guidance? Is there not something wrong when a mother is so afraid to lose the approval of her young daughter that she avoids doing what she knows is right? Surely, given the closeness between mother and child, it would have been more appropriate for Madhuri to have convinced Vinita of what needed to be done, and then gone ahead and done it?

There is another worrying aspect. I suspect that when Veena told her friends that she was on drugs, it was a cry for help. As was Vinita’s when she, in turn, told her mother. The final irony would be if Madhuri, by insisting on being a friend and confidante, instead of an older and wiser parent, in fact, let her daughter down.