One of my favourite aspects of doing art & science projects in high school in Chennai, India was that I got to stick my fingers into tubs of Fevicol, a white glue adhesive. The delicious part was not so much sticking your fingers into the tub but waiting for the Fevicol to dry, and then peeling it off your fingers. White cobwebs with your finger prints on them. Fevicol was the first ‘real’ easy-to-use and readily available glue of its kind in India – you could use it to hold together all manners of materials and surfaces.

The creative agency handling advertising for Fevicol (Ogilvy and Mather, my first employer) has done a brilliant (and very successful) job of introducing Fevicol as a metaphor for strength and bonding.

The ads are memorable and humorous; Fevicol provides bonding solutions to various everyday issues and people in overflowing buses feel at ease, politicians glued to chairs, large families are held together and wandering husbands are kept firmly in place.

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