PONDA: Anyone who lives in Ponda is familiar with the busy ‘Airport Road’ that does not connect to Dabolim, where one would usually head, to get on a plane and fly out of Goa. While there is no airport in Ponda, and certainly no space to accommodate one even in the future, the Approach Road to the Weekly Market has for the past 11 years been unofficially christened ‘Airport Road’ by the locals, who were either unable or unwilling to pronounce ‘Approach’.
In an attempt to rectify the strange misnomer that is sometimes a source of confusion for outsiders, the Ponda Municipal Council (PMC) on Saturday decided to name the road after Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth this year.
The PMC took the resolution after they received directions from the Central government to commemorate Aurobindo’s birth anniversary. The Council deliberated on various roads in the town and finally selected the Approach Road to be renamed after the spiritual reformer, who was also part of India’s freedom movement.
The Approach Road was constructed in order to decongest the market area and was inaugurated in 2011 by then Home Minister Ravi Naik, who also unveiled a plaque bearing the name of the road. While nobody remembers how the name caught on, most Ponda residents have two theories—the first being that the word ‘approach’ did not roll easily off the tongue, and many people remember hearing it as ‘Airport’. The second is that the new road was wider than most others in Ponda a decade ago, leading people to dub the double-width, runway-like 300m-long road ‘Airport Road’.
The nickname was validated further when local newspapers began calling it ‘Airport Road’ after it became the venue for the PMC’s annual Matoli Market ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi. Now, it remains to be seen if the road’s official new name catches on, or if locals continue referring to it by its funny, albeit perplexing nickname.
