Rooh Afza is more than a summer drink—it is a shared memory of the Indian subcontinent. Born in the bustling lanes of Old Delhi in 1907, this ruby-red syrup was created by Hakim Abdul Majid to combat the harsh northern summer. Over the next century, it survived Partition, migration, wars, and cha…
Shared cultural memory is the collective remembering of a community passed across generations. It is in the rhythms of your everyday that make you who you are. If you could pour it into a glass, it would look something like this. Can you smell it? Rooh Afza. The replenisher of the soul. Part herbs, part sugar, part memory. Rooh Afza is a story of the subcontinent.
It is a story of the north Indian summer and it is a story of Delhi. Around 1907 when Delhi was still under British rule, a young Hakim in the banaes of the old city, Hakeem Abdul Majeed was potion making in his dawakhana named Hamdard. He wanted to prepare a potion that could tackle the summer ailments of the northern plains. Dehydration, fatigue, heat strokes, your typical dilliki garmi. His experiments with flowers, fruits and herbs gave birth to Rooh Afza. The ruby colored concoction with a mesmerizing fragrance was an instant success with the visitors of the Hamdard dawakhana and there was no looking back. production center.
medicine [music] patent medicines introduced
Standard recipe. patented medicine or standardization. As Rooh Afza's manufacturing expanded with growing popularity, the young Hakim took it upon himself to get the label designed.
In 1910, an artist Mirza Nur Ahmed was tasked with crafting a colorful illustration which was then sent to Bombay to be printed at the Bolton press run by the Parsis. Over the century, barring a few minor changes, the label's design has largely remained true to Mirza Nur's original drawing. The bottles, however, have evolved from iconic glass to commercial PET. Now the young Hakim Abdul Majeed was not fated to live long. He died in the 1920s as Hamdard was still finding its feet. Leaving behind a wife, children and an unfinished legacy. His widow Rabia Begum quietly took over and made the decision to declare Hamdard a waqf, an Islamic charitable trust in which the profits would largely go towards public welfare. Then came partition 1947.
Independence arrived at a cost. The subcontinent was split. So were families, including Rabia's. Of her two surviving sons, the older one Hakim Abdul Hamid chose to stay in Delhi while the younger son Hakim Mohammed Said moved to the newly formed Pakistan.
or 1971 Bangladesh establishment Hindustan.
Now wearing three different nationalities, the Ruby syrup remains mostly the same and so does its design layout. Rooh Afza is described as Mashroob-e-Mashriq, the summer drink of the east. An advertising copy said to have written by Hakim Said himself. Mashroob-e-Mashriq, it remains a summer drink and a summer memory that much like the summer itself stretches across the borders caring little for borders.
any gathering especially in the summer months. These memories are now bottled in modern day factories. Their fragrance at once familiar and mesmerizing. More or less the composition has remained the same for the last 120 years. The first, um, the syrup is made. So this is sugar and water being mixed together to make a syrup out of it. Um, and then we mix a lot of ingredients into it. There are, uh, there is, um, there is lemon herbs which are distilled. The ark is taken out and then the ark is put into that syrup.
Uh then we've got juices, uh, into that, uh, pineapple juice, orange juice that goes into the making of Rooh Afza. And there are various other, uh, permitted approved coloring and, and, uh, essences and, um, flavorings that go into Rooh Afza. A lot of these are natural. I mean 90, 99% of Rooh Afza is natural. So, uh, so yeah all that mix, uh, goes together and then it's matured and then, uh, it's more of a distillate, uh, rather than anything else. Yeah. So out of all these 11 ingredients, they are Unani, uh, ingredients. They are herbal ingredients, uh, and as I told you that the initiation of the concept of Rooh Afza also was, uh, as a medicine.
Um, packaging of Rooh Afza is done where the syrup comes from top and into that hopper and then it is filled into separate bottles, all volumetric. So 750 ml into one bottle. The magazine of the label over there. Uh, and each flap is picking up one label and then going into and then transferring it into each bottle over there.
So it's a two-step process. One, the flap is picking up the label and then slapping it onto the bottle. So that was the original name of the trust, Hamdard Dawakhana. Then it changed to Hamdard Laboratories. Now where we are into separate trust, HD Foods India, that's again a trust. Nilofar, Khas, Gulab, Kasni, Sandal, Arq, Podina, Sandal, Tarbooz, Gajar, Munakka and Keora. So yeah, all these form the distillate.
Approximately 21 batches in a day. Uh, and each batch is approximately 11,400 bottles, um, per batch. So that's approximately 2 lakh 40,000 in a day is what we are manufacturing as of now. Very similar production, or around two lakh production in Aurangabad as well. So we're roughly around 4 lakh 40,000, 4 lakh 50,000 bottles per day manufacturing the whole of India. It's bread and butter to Hamdard, actually it's our biggest product.
We serve the society as well. This is from the profits of this product is what we are able to give back to society in terms of healthcare facilities, in terms of education.
Rooh Afza sales being channeled into education and healthcare embodies the spirit with which Rabia Begum had first declared Hamdard as waqf. The idea of charity being a cornerstone value in Islam. Philosophy of the product. The philosophy of the organization which is manufacturing that product, uh, which is a tax-exempt organization. It's a trust, um, and, uh, according to the law 85% of its profits, uh, go into charity.
Uh, the charity which we are doing are into, uh, three main areas. Uh, one is healthcare, education and skill development. Uh, and, uh, this is irrespective of any caste, creed, um, uh, where we would like to give benefit, uh, of this to the people, to the general public. It is now a product which is manufactured in all three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Uh, and, uh, it is a product of the subcontinent, uh, where everyone is enjoying its benefits, although started off in India, in Delhi.
For over a century now, carrying fragrance, memory and public welfare, long after the glass is empty, the poet Silvi wrote...
Companion article
Around 1907, in the old city of a Delhi still under British rule, a young Unani physician named Hakeem Abdul Majeed was mixing preparations in his dispensary, or dawakhana, which he had named Hamdard. He was trying to formulate something for the ailments that arrived every year with the north Indian summer: dehydration, fatigue, heatstroke. Working with flowers, fruits and herbs, Abdul Majeed arrived at a ruby-coloured concoction with a distinctive fragrance, which he called Rooh Afza, roughly "replenisher of the soul." It found favour quickly among visitors to his dawakhana, and what began as a clinical remedy grew into a defined commercial product.
As demand grew, Abdul Majeed commissioned an artist, Mirza Nur Ahmed, in 1910 to design a label for the bottle. The artwork was sent to Bombay to be printed at the Bolton Press. More than a century on, the label has barely changed from that original drawing; the packaging that has moved with the times is the bottle itself, from glass to modern plastic. Abdul Majeed did not live to see Rooh Afza's later success. He died in the 1920s, while Hamdard was still establishing itself, leaving behind a wife, children, and an unfinished enterprise.
His widow, Rabia Begum, took over the business and made a decision that would shape its structure for the century to follow: she declared Hamdard a waqf, an Islamic charitable trust, under which profits would be directed largely toward public welfare rather than private accumulation. That single choice, rooted in the Islamic tradition of charitable endowment, is the reason Hamdard today operates not as a conventional company but as a tax-exempt trust.
Partition, in 1947, split the subcontinent, and it split Rabia Begum's family along with it. Of her two surviving sons, the elder, Hakim Abdul Hamid, chose to remain in Delhi and continued running Hamdard in India. The younger, Hakim Mohammed Said, moved to the newly formed Pakistan and built Hamdard there; a separate Hamdard establishment later took root in Bangladesh after 1971. Three companies now operate under three flags, yet the syrup and its label layout have stayed close to identical across all of them. Rooh Afza came to be advertised as "Mashroob-e-Mashriq," the drink of the East, in copy said to have been written by Hakim Said himself. As the film notes, the drink "remains a summer memory that, much like the summer itself, stretches across the borders" with little regard for the lines partition drew.
The film also visits a present-day Hamdard production line, where an executive interviewed for the film walks through how little the process has changed. "More or less the composition has remained the same for the last 120 years," the executive says. A sugar-and-water syrup base is blended with distilled herbal arks and fruit juices, chiefly pineapple and orange, along with approved colourings and flavourings. By the executive's account, close to 99 percent of the mix is natural, built around eleven Unani herbs and flowers that include rose, mint, chicory, sandalwood and watermelon, among others, sourced and distilled much as they were in Abdul Majeed's own formulation.
The scale is now industrial. A single flagship plant runs roughly 21 batches a day, each yielding about 11,400 bottles, for close to 240,000 bottles daily; a comparable plant in Aurangabad brings the Indian total to somewhere near 440,000 to 450,000 bottles a day. "It's bread and butter to Hamdard," the executive says of Rooh Afza, calling it the trust's biggest product by far.
That scale of production matters because of what happens to its proceeds. As a registered trust, Hamdard is legally required to direct 85 percent of its profits into charitable activity, concentrated in three areas: healthcare, education and skill development, extended, the executive says, "irrespective of any caste, creed," to the general public. It is a direct institutional descendant of Rabia Begum's founding decision: a bottled soft drink still functioning, on paper, as an engine for a century-old waqf.
What the film ultimately traces is not just the biography of a product but the persistence of a particular kind of memory. Rooh Afza is manufactured today in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, three nations shaped by a single Partition that could easily have fractured a single family business into unrelated, competing enterprises. Instead, the recipe, the label and even the founding ethos of charity travelled largely intact across every new border. The film closes by invoking a verse from the poet Silvi on the fragrance that lingers, the narration says, "long after the glass is empty," a fitting close to a story about a syrup that has outlived its founder, survived the splitting of a subcontinent, and still shows up, ruby-red, at gatherings across the region every summer.
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