“There was a well in the rear courtyard of our house in Alwar. During vacations, all the children of the joint family would assemble by it in the early afternoon, draw water and splash around,” reminisces Narendra Jain, a retired IT professional, who has worked worldwide in an illustrious career spanning almost forty years. “The actual bath would only start when our mothers would yell at us to wind up fast – and the soap we used? Lifebuoy!”

He hums the jingle, a rage when broadcast – “Tandurusti ki raksha karta hai Lifebuoy, Lifebuoy hai jahan tandurusti hai wahan – Lifebuoy!” Such was the power of the jingle that when he was posted in the Middle East and would come back from field trips, all sweaty and dusty, he would find himself wishing he had a Lifebuoy to wash it off. So even to date, he uses a Lifebuoy hand wash and hand sanitizer.

The world over, though, the first radio ad broadcast was a jingle attributed to General Mills, whose catchy ditty was for “Wheaties – the best...