Editorial - Bride Class
Illustration: Sadewa Kristianto
relationships

I Spoke With the Guy who Teaches Women how to ‘Win Husbands'

From cooking and sewing lessons to PPTs on the importance of obedience, his ‘Dulhan Course’ covers it all.

Earlier this year, a flyer advertising a ‘Dulhan Course’ in the Indian city of Hyderabad made its way to the internet where it was met with much outrage. It covered basic home economics, with the tagline in Urdu and English claiming to teach women to lead successful married lives.

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‘Why dulhan (bride)?’ the internet rightly asked. ‘Isn’t it the responsibility of both people in the couple to run a family?’ Ilyas Shamsi, who started the course, told Indiatimes it was a marketing ploy to make home management lessons meant for both men and women sound more appealing. He repeated this justification to VICE, but of the 12 people Shamsi claimed had signed up, not a single one was a man.

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The course is a longer version of what was previously a series of one-day seminars and workshops which Shamsi claimed were met with such success that he felt the demand was sufficient to turn it into a three-month programme.

I’m a person with a long history of trying anything, so I decided to give it a shot and signed up.

The Family Institute isn’t listed on Maps and its nearest landmark is an hour and a half from where I live. I embarked in the spirit of journalism on a long auto ride to the noisy and bustling Tolichowki. At the end of a narrow street was the quiet calm of a residential neighbourhood. There I spotted hoardings for The Family Institute outside a semi-constructed house. “Successful Married Life, but how?” asked a flex by the door. Below a cartoon of two people ripping a heart apart was a list of the courses offered: Pre-marriage Training, Post-marriage Training and the Best Mother Course.

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The Family Institute lists the following courses on the flex outside: Pre-marriage Training, Post-marriage Training and the Best Mother Course.

Upon entering, I found a large lobby surrounded by plastic cubicle walls. There was a clothes stand to one side with various kameezes and coats, a tailoring machine, a lonely-looking whiteboard and a small two-burner stovetop. No students in sight, no sign of activity. At the end of the lobby was a small white-lit room where Shamsi and his wife, Habeeba, sat idly thumbing their phones.

For all its social media virality, marketing gimmicks, and claims of fielding 50-60 appreciation calls every day, the Family Institute was empty.

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"If people come, then there will be a class," said Shamsi from behind a laptop. “On the first day 12 people signed up, but nobody came back after. They want personality development, Mughlai cooking, don’t want the basics. After 17-18 nobody likes to sit in a class, that was the mistake we made.”

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Ilyas Shamsi, with his wife Habeeba, offers a Dulhan course because “Over the last 20 years I’ve seen cases of family issues, husband-wife issues where problems are caused by petty things like ‘girls don't know how to cook’, or ‘she doesn't know how to keep the house properly’.”

I requested a brief trailer of the full course, to which he gladly obliged.

“Over the last 20 years I’ve seen cases of family issues, husband-wife issues where problems are caused by petty things like ‘girls don't know how to cook’, or ‘she doesn't know how to keep the house properly’,” began Shamsi. “That's why we have framed this course.”

Shamsi had a squint, with the unsettling, blissed-out expression of a man who had found religion. At times it got awkward. Conversations went like this: sweeping statement, smile, factoid, grin, affectation of humility, beam.

“Some womanizer…uh..feminist type people, please don't take it in another way, they ask ‘Why should women do [housework]? Why men don't do the home affairs?’ I used to say ‘Why should men do? Why women should do? Why both can't share? Sharing is caring.’ Somebody has to sweep the roads. If a wife is working, a man has to do the home affairs.”

Shamsi had around six presentations in Urdu and English. The first was called: An Ideal Wife–An Ideal Wife is a woman with an Ideal Husband. Then these: How to Win Husband; Be Thankful to Husband; Give respect for respect; Be patient; If you're wrong accept it; Expenditure control; and so on—shuttling from random adages to practical life lessons to sexist instructions.

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Presentations for men, on the other hand, went eloquently like: ‘There is Male Inside Female Mr in Every Mrs. He in She. Which proves that man can't live without woman. Happiness mantra: Wife Home Night.’ And my favourite: a slide complete with cartoon illustrations: “Mother-in-law vs Daughter-in-law>>>WWF.”

My conversation with Shamsi went like most conversations with sexist men do. Anyone, especially a woman who’s been subjected to a lecture by an elder member of the patriarchy, knows this feeling. This feeling of entrapment in a one-sided conversation you can’t argue with but are too ‘nice’ to leave.

“24 lakh women are abandoned in India,” Shamsi tells me, as a justification for why he thinks women need to learn home management skills. Why isn’t this instead a reason, for someone who claims to be open-minded, to say that men need to get involved in home chores as well? Why should so many women be in such a situation that the worst thing that can happen to them is a breadwinning husband leaving?

As I type this, I’m thinking of Anu, our full-time maid who lives with us. One day, my husband walked out of the house with his kurta inside out, and I remarked most affectionately that he was a silly goose. I’ll never forget how awkward I felt when Anu said to me, “We must never speak like this of our husbands.” She, Shamsi might’ve said, is a good wife. A good dulhan.

It’s Diwali day and fireworks are going off around our neighbourhood. Nobody loves Diwali more than Anu. But today, I can hear her crying. She’s got deep blue welts on her shoulder, and she winces while drawing a rangoli. It’s been four years since she’s been in an abusive marriage, and we got to know now because she would never say a word about what went on behind closed doors. Didn’t she know how to cook and sew, didn’t she “respect her husband”? “When women don’t listen, this is how we teach them,” her husband Sagar had growled when we intervened.

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I wish this was a joke, that this course didn’t exist, but it does. Sure, nobody’s ever attended the three-month version, but plenty of seminar and workshop versions have run for about two years now. If Shamsi—who also says he runs a syndicate of 100 NGOs along with an independent social media consultancy—is to be believed, he’s conducted this workshop in other states of India as well. He also has his own YouTube channel with just a little under 8,000 followers on Facebook. How many people would have bought into this idea? Or, having already bought into it, join up in an echo chamber, where they can hear over and over again that it’s their wife’s fault?

“My dear sister, we live in a conservative society, we have to accept that!” exclaims Shamsi. “You can't leave your traditions but you don't have to be conservative. It doesn't mean that you become too liberal. You have to be in your limits. You have to understand what is life, what are your limitations and also your roles and responsibilities for your home, your family, your neighbour, your state, your country, for your world!” In Shamsi’s world, it’s clear who decides what these responsibilities are. I’m lucky that this isn’t mine. My mother-in-law and I cherish each other. I can call my husband a goose without worrying about the consequences.

Shamsi is 40, and married with five children. His wife Habeeba, who preferred to let him answer for her, teaches the tailoring bit. “All this is for her,” Shamsi says. “Do you know, she’s making money? Tell her you’re making money!”

This course is legit. I know because I called up almost every name on the register for a Dulhan seminar in January 2019. Five women and five men. Of the women I called, not one was ready to admit that she’d attended. This was strange, because I saw their names alongside those of men who confirmed their attendance. Shamsi had even showed me pictures from a seminar held earlier this year, where the slides we’d gone through were on the screen. One of the women thought I had a rishta (match) for her daughter. Some of the men I’d called said they’d attended with their wives and had nothing but praise for the ‘lecture’.

One of the men made it clear there were no problems in his marriage. When I requested to speak to his wife, he told me to call back later.

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