Everyone has some dreams. Dreams that is the reason for their living. The hero of this story is also a dreamer; she thinks differently and sees things differently from others. In her small life, she wants to fly on her own sky with her dream clouds. She loves nature, whenever mother earth gets wet with raindrops she got inspired to create something new, something innovative. She plays with mud and gives them different shapes that symbolize the nature and of course her imaginary dream world. Her name is Shelly and she is 25.
She was happy with her big world of innovation and her family members also support her a lot. But things are getting difficult when she got married to a rich and high-class conservative family, where things are different what they show and what they actually are. Shelly’s father was a teacher and liberal-minded, he never stopped her with anything she wants to do regarding her passion with making sculptures. He helped Shelly to open a small academy also where she teaches small kids how to play with mud and their imagination.
As she is the only child and her mother also died when she was 10, she brought up by her father. Her father Mr Ahmed Iysaz mange to taught her not to sacrifice her ambitions because of the conservative society. He also helps her to know the dark sides of societal prejudices that do not want to give honour to women’s work. And his this kind of activities made him unpopular among relatives. People in society also used to praise him in front of him but gossip negatively on his back. But he never cares about these things until he had cancer. When he comes to know about his disease, he becomes more sick thinking of Shelly and her future. So he arranges to marry her with a modern family who looks like doesn’t have any problem with her profession. But it was a bad decision, he realized after her marriage.
Shelly meets the boy and his family before marriage, that time they praise about her sculptures and the academy also. And the boy whose name is Shahabuddin Chowdhury sounds so progressive and open-minded. So Shelly also agreed to marry him.
Things are changing after the marriage; the so-called high society person who shows they are liberal most of the time is not liberal at all. Same persons who praise Shelly for her sculptures and academy started to insult her as her working is not allowed it’s hurting their so-called family pride. They belong to high society and their women’s are like show piece doll who only can work inside the house and not allowed to go out for earning.
They asked her to leave her academy but she can continue her work at home if she wants as it is also needed to show off that they are respecting Shelly’s work. It hurts Shelly’s emotion as she never expected these types of behaviour from mother in laws house. She tried to convince them but failed and she was matured enough to give respect to her own feelings that her father always taught not to compromise.
So she didn’t compromise with her passion and dream for the sake of a fake family who doesn’t care about her feelings and passion and career. It is not the real family which did not support you, your ambitions because you are female.
In the different structure of society, we can find different types of Family. It is not the woman every time who has to sacrifice their career because of family pride and status. Men’s are also affected if the family is not supportive and it also depends on the person, some can overcome the fear of going against the family and live their dream life. But most of the cases we can find the opposite kind of persons.
The family is obviously needed, one cannot live without family but it’s about self-satisfaction that is tried to focus in this essay. One should not sacrifice their career their passion for their dream world for the sake of the family.
> Alma Siddiqua
Shelly’s Dream World
