My Expressions

Childhood is a thing which everyone loves! Everybody misses it when they grow up. The best thing about childhood? Its memories! And one thing which all grown-ups remember is having Rooh Afza.

The most favorite drink of Indians! And not only in India, but it is also loved in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and all the other countries in the Indian subcontinent. It’s our very own Coca Cola! Because Coca Cola, for Americans, is not just a drink, it’s a part of their culture, and Rooh Afza, for us, is also a part of our culture. But what if I told you that it is not very much “our own”?

Well, yes. Rooh Afzai is not from India, it was created in Ghaziabad, Delhi, which is in India, but, the man who created it was not Indian. He was from the area which we now call Pakistan. His name was Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed, he was a Hakeem, which means doctor, and he owned a Dawakhana, or medicine shop, named Hamdard Laboratories. During the scorching Indian summers of the year 1906, when people were dying of thirst, heatstroke, and diarrhea, he thought of creating a drink that can quench their thirst, boost their immunity, and refresh them instantly. So he dived deep into Unani medicine and created a drink using the juices of rose, kevda, spinach, carrot, and many other medicinal plants. He named it Rooh Afza, Urdu for Soul Refresher. It was an instant hit. Everyone who could afford it had at least one bottle. But this drink did not have a communal angle, it was not only for Muslims, but it was for everybody. Everyone loved it, regardless of any religion.

The story of Rooh Afza gets more interesting at the time of the Partition. The inventor of the drink had died till then. So the elder son of Abdul Majeed, Hakeem Abdul Hameed, decided to stay back in India and open a factory of Rooh Afza here, while the younger son, Hakeem Mohammad Said, migrated to Pakistan and built another Rooh Afza factory there. Both the brothers named their factories after their father’s old clinic, Hamdard Laboratories, and helped each other in business. After that, whenever either country, India or Pakistan, ran out of Rooh Afza, the other nation helped it. For example, in the year 2019, during Ramzan, the Muslim’s festive month, India ran out of Rooh Afza. And Pakistan helped us by exporting many bottles of it.

We keep hearing news and stories about wars and conflicts between India and Pakistan, but this story is about friendship. It is not just about a drink, it is a small example of the things we share. Like the love of cricket, love for music, the beauty of nature, and many more. I think we need to see beyond the bottle, we need to see the history behind it. And I hope that we certainly will. Because maybe all our rivalries can be resolved over a drink, a drink that we share anyway!

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