Gin with rosewater, juicy mangoes and delectable kebabs: Delicacies that Ghalib loved & cherished

Mirza Asadullah Khan, better known as Ghalib, was famously fond of mangoes. Every summer, it is worth remembering his definitive answer to disputes about the best mango variety: All that matters, he said, is that they be sweet and plentiful.

Ghalib, whose 150th death anniversary fell this February, witnessed the last days of the last Mughal court. End times like those can witness a kind of hopeless high spirits, as people make the most of ways of living soon to vanish — and, after the end comes, those still left do what they must to survive.

Ghalib experienced both, and it informs his works. Rather than sweeping visions and ideals, he acknowledges the accessible pleasures of this world [like mangoes] and has an ironic understanding of what it takes to get them. He was a sensualist, but a realist too, and in his letters, even more than his elegantly elliptical verse, he conveys his delights, dilemmas and hopes in ways we can still relate to.


Food forms part of the world he enjoys, never in excess [except, maybe mangoes], but with due appreciation: The almond milk he started his day with, the kebabs of Old Delhi where he lived, the murabbas he wrote to friends about, a simple dish of dahi, and the gin he drank in moderation, mixed with rosewater.

Ghalib refers to Old Tom, which is not a brand but an older style of gin than the London dry style that is most common today. Old Tom was rougher, distilled from small batch pot stills rather than the continuous stills used for smooth modern spirit, and was sweetened to compensate, which might have appealed to Indian tastes.

In The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple recounts how Ghalib’s tastes saved him after the fall of Delhi, when most of the Mughal court was killed or exiled. When questioned by a British officer, who asked rudely if he was a Muslim, Ghalib replied he was half: “I drink wine, but I don’t eat pork.” The officer laughed and let him go.

Old Tom was once widely imported to India: “The unequalled perfection of this gin is the result of over a century’s experience,” read an ad in The Times of India in 1932. But this sweetened style dropped out of fashion, until recently being revived thanks to the global gin craze. You can now get it again here, which was useful when my friend, the scholar Murali Ranganathan suggested celebrating Ghalib’s death anniversary.

Murali had noted, sadly, that while the centenary, 50 years ago, had been a big event, now it was passing almost unmarked. So, when another friend, the historian Simin Patel, offered to help organise a private tribute, we all got to work. We mixed Old Tom with rosewater for an impromptu cocktail — the Mirza Martini, maybe? — and served his favourite foods (though, obviously not, unseasonal mangoes) to a small group of Ghalib fans, to remember a man who knew how to live through end times, and whatever comes after.