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 [music] 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? Ru absa. The replenisher of the ru the soul. Part herbs, part sugar, part memory. Ruavza is [music] a story of the subcontinent. It is a story of the north Indian summer and it [music] is a story of Delhi. Around 1907 when Delhi was still under British rule, a young Hakim in the bananes of the old city, Hakeim Abdul Majjid was portion making in his dawakana named Hamdard. He wanted to prepare a portion that could tackle the summer ailments of the northern plains. Dehydration, fatigue, heat strokes, your typical diliki gmi. His experiments with flowers, fruits and herbs gave birth to Ruabza. The ruby colored concoction with a mesmerizing fragrance was an instant success with the visitors of the Hamdar Davakana and there was no looking back. [music] production center. [music] [music] medicine [music] patent medicines introduced or popular actually establish space. [music] [music] Standard recipe. [music] tip medicine patented medic or standardization. As Ruva's manufacturing [music] expanded with growing popularity, the young Hakeim took it upon himself to get the label designed. In 1910, an artist Mirzanur Ahmed was tasked with crafting a colorful illustration which was then sent to Bombay to be printed at the Bolton press run by the Paris. Over the century, barring a few minor changes, the label's design has largely remained true to Miranor's original drawing. The bottles, however, have evolved from iconic glass to commercial pet. Now the young Hakim Abdul Majjid was not fated to live long. He died in the 1920s as Hamad was still finding its feet. Leaving behind a wife, children and an unfinished legacy. His widow Rabia Beum quietly took over and made the decision to declare Hamard a wak and 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 [music] including Rabyas. Of her two surviving sons. The older one Hakim Abdul Hamid chose to stay in Delhi [music] while the younger son Hakim Mouhammad Sahed moved to the newly formed Pakistan. or 71 Bangladesh manag Bangladesh establishment Hindustan. Now wearing three different nationalities, the Ruby syrup remains mostly the same and so does its design layout. Ruabza is described as Mashru Mashri, the summer drink of the east. An advertising copy [music] said to have written by Hakeim Sed himself. Mashu Mashri, it remains a summer drink and a summer memory that much like the summer itself stretches across the Bis caring little for borders. dentist. [music] Memories. >> [music] >> any gathering especially in the summer months. These memories are now bottled in modernday 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 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 ruabza. And there are various other uh permitted approved coloring and and uh essences and um flavorings that go into ruabza. A lot of these are natural. I mean 90 90 99% of rua is natural. So [snorts] uh so yeah all that mix uh goes together and then it's it's matured and then then uh it's it's more of a distillate uh rather than anything else. Yeah. So out so all these 11 ingredients they are yunani uh ingredients they are they are herbal ingredients uh and and as I told you that the the uh init initiation of the of the concept of ruabza also was uh as a medicine >> um packaging of ruabza is done where the syrup comes from top and into that hopper and then it is filled into separate bottles all volutric. 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 it's a two-step process. One the the flap is picking up the label and then slapping it onto the bottle. So that was the original name of the trust Hamdahana. Then it changed to Hamd Laboratories. Now where we are into separate trust HD foods India that's again a trust. Nilopur, Dha, Hus, Gulab, Kasni, Shadila, Raab, Podina, Sundal, Tafair, Gajger, Monaka and Kyoda. So yeah, all these form the distillate. Approximately 21 uh 21 batches in a day. Uh and each batch is approximately uh 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 Orangabad as well. So we roughly around 4 lakh 40,000 4 lakh 50,000 bottle per day manufacturing the whole of India. It's bread and bucket to Hamdas actually it's our biggest product. We we serve the society as well. This is the from from the pro the profits of this product is what we are able to give back to society in terms of healthcare facilities in terms of education. >> Ruabza sales being channeled into education and healthcare embodies the spirit with which Rabia Beum had first declared Hamar as Vak. 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 taxexempt 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 uh areas. Uh one is healthcare, education and skill development. uh and [clears throat] this is irrespective of any cast creed um uh where we would like to give benefit uh of this to uh to the people to the general public. It is now a product which is manufactured in all three countries India, Pakistan and 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 Foreign [music] [music]
Companion article
The story Nous tells here begins in 1907, when Delhi was still under British rule and a young Hakim — a practitioner of Unani medicine — named Abdul Majeed was mixing remedies in a small dawakhana, or medicine shop, called Hamdard in the lanes of the old city. His target was mundane and universal: the dehydration, fatigue and heatstroke that came with the north Indian summer. Experimenting with flowers, fruit and herbs, Majeed arrived at a ruby-coloured syrup he named Rooh Afza — literally, the refresher of the soul. It found an instant following among visitors to his shop, and the business never looked back.
The film frames Rooh Afza as more than a product: a piece of shared cultural memory passed down the way rhythms and rituals are, something that, if poured into a glass, would look and smell distinctly like a particular time and place. Even the label has barely changed. In 1910, Majeed commissioned an artist, Mirza Noor Ahmed, to design the illustration that was then sent to Bombay to be printed at the Bolton Press. More than a century on, aside from the move from glass bottles to commercial PET plastic, that same design still wraps the bottle.
Majeed did not live to see the brand he had built mature. He died in the 1920s, while Hamdard was still finding its footing, leaving behind his wife and children. His widow, Rabea Begum, took over the business and made a decision that would shape everything that followed: she declared Hamdard a waqf, an Islamic charitable trust, meaning the bulk of its profits would be legally bound to serve public welfare rather than accrue to the family alone.
That structure held through Partition in 1947, even as the family itself did not. Of Rabea Begum's two surviving sons, the elder, Hakim Abdul Hamid, chose to remain in Delhi, while the younger, Hakim Mohammad Saeed, moved to the newly created Pakistan. The syrup went with both of them, and a third branch followed later in Bangladesh. Rooh Afza is now made and sold as three separate national businesses in three countries that share a border, and in some cases a fraught history, but the recipe and the label in each are still recognisably the same.
The explainer walks through the syrup's production much as it has run for over a century: a base of sugar and water is turned into syrup, into which distilled herbal extracts, or arks, are mixed, along with fruit juices such as pineapple and orange. Company staff describe roughly eleven distinct Unani herbal ingredients going into the final distillate — among them rose, chicory, mint, watermelon, carrot and raisin, according to the names given on camera — with a small share of approved colourings and flavourings making up the rest. The company puts the mix at roughly 90 to 99 percent natural ingredients, produced today in factories running around 21 batches a day, each yielding more than 11,000 bottles. Between its plants, Hamdard's India operation alone accounts for something in the region of 440,000 to 450,000 bottles daily — what staff describe as the company's single biggest product by volume.
The waqf structure Rabea Begum set up in the 1920s is still legally binding on the business today. As a tax-exempt trust, the company says 85 percent of its profits are required by law to go into charity, channelled mainly into healthcare, education and skill-development programmes that are, per the company's own description, open to the general public irrespective of caste or creed. The film frames this as continuous with the spirit of the original waqf declaration — the idea of charity as a foundational value, expressed here through a soft drink's profit margins rather than through the medicine chest Majeed originally built the brand from.
What the film keeps returning to is how little the actual product has had to change to survive a century that included the end of colonial rule, the death of its inventor, and a Partition that split the subcontinent — and the family that owned the brand — into separate nations. Rooh Afza is still advertised, in copy the film attributes to Hakim Mohammad Saeed himself, as mashroob-e-mashriq: the summer drink of the East. It is manufactured today in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alike, each operation independent of the others, each still selling more or less the same syrup under more or less the same label Mirza Noor Ahmed drew in 1910.
The film closes on a couplet from an Urdu poet, its point made without needing translation for anyone who has grown up with the drink: that a fragrance and a memory can outlast the glass that held them, and, evidently, the borders drawn across the region where it was invented.
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