"It was the achievement of a lifetime and it took up Rakesh's whole life. "Justify the truth of the statement with reference to A Devoted Son.

Certainly, the portrait that Desai gives of Rakesh is one
who is absolutely driven to please his parents.  The vision is one whereby he subjugates
his own desires for their wishes.  If they want him to study, he does.  When they want
him to come back to India to tend to them, he does.  When he needs to marry an
uneducated villager to make them happy, he does.  In the oddest of ways, Rakesh is more
representative of the typical Indian woman who is bound to honor the requests of her
parents.  This achievement was to make his parents happy, and this becomes something
that takes up his entire life.  The need to cure his father is representative of this,
something that consumes him and something that, interestingly enough, he is unable to
fully accomplish.  In this, Rakesh works or allows a goal to "take up" his whole life
and does not possess the capacity to accomplish it.  The idea that love or filial
loyalty can ever be fully accomplished, as in absolute totality is what is critiqued
through Rakesh.  The father's anger at his son in the last scene helps to bring this
out.  The consumption and intense zeal with which Rakesh works towards healing his
father, a "goal that takes up his whole life," is one whereby he is unable to accomplish
it.  At the same time,  Rakesh's intense manner is one that alienates his father, making
the accomplishment of his goal as one that subsumes him, but one that cannot be fully
held.  This ends up proving that what it is that drives Rakesh throughout his life ends
up driving a wedge between he and his father.