PREM NAAM HAI MERA

The sinister catchphrase, a sentence, has come to define one of Bollywood's most iconic villains; a villain who slayed with a voice that changed from silken menace to wheedling entreaty, one who was as popular as heroes he worked with...

His lecherous look, his salacious sneer, and a voice that could range from silken menace to wheedling entreaty were all he needed and no woman his sly stare fell on was safe. With the depredations he committed on-screen, Prem Chopra just had to say his name to establish his notoriety.

In Bobby (1973), where Raj Kapoor got him to play a cameo but did not reveal its exact contours, Chopra was dismayed to find that he had just had one dialogue comprising of only half a dozen words.

A star is born

However, those six words, "Prem naam hai mera, Prem Chopra", as he clutched the arm of the runaway nubile heroine, made him immortal in Indian films and popular culture. As Chopra recalled in his first-person biography, the dialogue "that I had been unhappy with had made me a brand for life.

Overnight it became my trademark, synonymous with me".

Over three decades later, it resurfaced in Bollywood when it was delivered by Ranbir Kapoor in Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, Ajay Devgn in All the Best: Fun Begins (both 2009) and Chopra himself delivered it again in a flashback sequence in Golmaal 3 (2010).

A name that stops trains

Chopra, who turned 89 recently this year, once again made the headlines for delaying a Delhibound train due to the same dialogue.