To clear its name, village looks to Kalam

They hate the name of their village. In a quiet corner of the picturesque Igatpuri tehsil — barely 30 km from bustling Nashik — 57 families of tribal village Vaitagwadi want a new address: for vaitag literally translates into ‘‘irritant’’ and vaitagwadi — ‘‘irritating village’’.

Tired of being the butt of jokes, the residents now want the village to be called Dr Abdul Kalam Nagar in the honour of the President, who will be visiting them on October 15 as part of his tour to inspect the wadi (orchard) project in the region.

‘‘I don’t know how our village got this name,’’ says a frustrated Dashrath Bendukale. ‘‘Everywhere we go, people ridicule us, saying the irritants have arrived. Unless we change the name to something positive, our problems will not go away’’.

For now, this is at the top of the residents’ agenda — even though the area is plagued with water problems and have no roads. This is the second attempt to rename the village. ‘‘Five years ago, we wanted to call ourselves Gokulnagar,’’ says Balkisan Darane.