There is a story about Shah Jahan that illustrates how the mighty Mughal emperor viewed the consumption of alcohol in the same way that a Brahmin priest might view eating b*#f - as strictly off limits. He was once feeling so down in the dumps that all his best doctors put their brains together and came up with a tonic that promised to be a pick-me-up, and which was a supremely expensive concoction to make. But one sip of it and Shah Jahan spat it out, because it reminded him of wine. The drink didn’t have alcohol in it, though. What it did have was jaifal, or nutmeg, which he’d smell in his father Jahangir’s breath every time the latter drank wine since the spice was used to add fragrance to the drink. Shah Jahan thus associated it with booze and rejected it outright, and no one ever got to know whether the pricey tonic was indeed effective or not because it was never made again.

Kurush Dalal