A cult called Old Monk, the people's drink

How does a humble, underpriced dark rum become the poison of choice for entire generations of Indians? What is the secret?

A rumour I heard far too often while growing up was that Old Monk XXX rum had a hierarchy in place. The very best maal — the top quality stuff they produced — would go to the armed forces involved in active duty. It allegedly helped keep our soldiers warm while they were out there battling not just enemy forces but also the elements of nature. The next rung in the ladder were military canteens, which sell liquor at a subsidised rate for current and former soldiers and their dependents. After that came the all-important babus running the country (ish). Depending on who was narrating this apocryphal tale, there’d be a varying range of other beneficiaries before I — the average, everyday civilian — would finally get to sample some Old Monk goodness.

I never believed the story until I found myself at a fauji’s house once, in possession of an Old Monk with a bottle design I hadn’t seen before. The label declared categorically that the rum was meant specifically for soldiers. Who knows, I thought, maybe it’s true. Either way, it’s a fun story.

How deep this conspiracy goes, or how real it is, is a question best left unanswered. Old Monk, as a brand, is clearly exceptional at myth-making. A few years ago, there was this persistent story being reported that Old Monk was going to shut down. It went on for a while and, with no clarification from the owners, gathered steam. Drunken tributes started flowing in on social media and trashy listicle websites. The company ownership seemed to be only too happy to go along with the rumours. They decided not to address them, because why would they? People were busy buying cartons of Old Monk out of loyalty, nostalgia, FOMO, and, well, alcoholism.

Personally, I’m not a fan. I know that suggests I have faulty genes or something, but I really don’t like Old Monk. The vanilla essence is too much. The elaborate flavour of rum is too much. It’s too heavy, it makes me feel weird. I don’t like it with Coke. Without Coke, it’s even worse. And yet, the cult of Old Monk is so all-consuming that, even as a self-professed nonbeliever, I still can’t pretend otherwise.

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As soon as the woodfire oven smell of winter creeps into the air, bottles of Old Monk are dusted off. This is especially true for Delhi (where I live), but not quite exclusive to it. There’s a natural association between cold weather and Old Monk (triple X) rum — it’s the hug of a warm blanket; a protective forcefield against the lashing winds that strike your face when you’re at a wedding in December and January, huddled up next to an incandescent angithi — a desi heater — or those giraffe-like outdoor electric heaters you get now. Add in a couple of tikkas and kebabs, and the Old Monk experience feels complete.

Here, I’d like to do some harmless myth-busting: alcohol doesn’t actually warm you up. It’s an urban legend cooked up by bumbling drunks. In fact, alcohol actually makes you colder, can you imagine? Old Monk making you colder? It sounds disgusting and wrong. But apparently, “alcohol is a vasodilator, meaning it causes your blood vessels to dilate”. (I have no idea what that means — feel free to read more here.)

That said, it still makes you feel warm, which is what counts. And Old Monk seems to do that better than anything else, even brandy, the price of which alone is enough to send chills down most spines.

That’s probably the best part about Old Monk. It’s so ridiculously cheap. For broke college kids, reliant on the generosity of their families and whose only purpose in life is to be a disappointment, it’s a blessing from above. Like my time in the (in)famous Delhi University, where the best way to get hooched out of your mind — balls-out plotzed — would be via an Old Monk quarter dunked into a bottle of Thums Up/Coke, and shared between five, maybe six, maybe even seven people, in a park somewhere, without having to go to a bar that no one could afford. The Coke helped too; our unrefined taste buds weren’t much comfortable with the harsh taste of real alcohol, so we were glad to water it down with sweet, fizzy drinks to make it more palatable.

And it wasn’t like we were drinking, like, illicit moonshine or toilet wine or desi fermented alcohol — colloquially called naarangi-mosambi, apparently prepared using leftover waste in remote lands far removed from any human civilisation because of the fetid aroma it would generate. Compared to the alternatives at hand, and given its super cheap price and exquisite word of mouth marketing, Old Monk dark rum in a Coke pet bottle felt like a fancy cocktail at a five-star.

In Mumbai, where I spent a few years after college, I’d have assumed that Old Monk wouldn’t be such a fixture, but how wrong I was. Because Mumbai has the sea, a place practically begging you to sit there, let the waves wash ashore, waste time, maybe get a drink or two. The last part isn’t so straightforward, what with all the policemen — crudely referred to by locals as pandu or mamu — patrolling the area diligently, primarily to stop any young romance from blossoming, but also to prevent substance related extracurriculars. The best way then, of course, is Old Monk in a bottle of Coke and no one would ever find out. Plus the financial burdens that a big city like Mumbai imposes, where alcohol is far more expensive than it needs to be, makes Old Monk an inevitability when the end of the month approaches.

These are youthful experiences that a lot of people go through, but Old Monk has never been a kid’s drink or anything. Even seasoned, professional drinkers — old uncles with suitcases of cash hidden in their homes — have a weakness for this nonsense of a rum. They’ll happily drink it when there’s no one around to judge, saving the aged single-malts only for when they want to show off, not for having a good time. The key is familiarity. And in creative circles especially — among the kind of people with big ambitions and small wallets — Old Monk persists like an annoying colleague who you just have to force yourself to like.

I don’t fully understand it, but there’s obviously something magical about this drink that makes it so inherently local, ubiquitous, essential, absolute. Regardless of financial status, of age or profession, of weather or taste, everyone seems so bewitched by Old Monk. Maybe it’s a reminder of our youth, of the times it evokes, of the unconditional foolishness it leads to. Either way, this rum is the most Indian kind of alcohol I can think of. It’s basically a cult.