Saturday, January 31, 2009

Rafael Nadal wins Padmashree award

Rafael NadalMelbourne, Australia. Even as Tennis superstar Rafael Nadal battled for five hours to defeat compatriot Fernando Verdasco and to give himself a chance to win the Australian Open title, he was surprised to learn that he had won another title without even serving for a set. Nadal was chosen by the Government of India to receive Padmashree title, an award given for distinguished contribution in various spheres of activities. Nadal was further surprised that he was awarded not for his contribution to Sports, but for Social Service.

“Just after I won the semi-final against Fernando, I was given this letter by my manager. The letter is from your Padma Award committee and it congratulates me for having won Padmashree award for social service in India. I am happy, but this is a bit confusing, and I can’t think straight after that gruelling match, but I am happy. I love India. Namaste” Nadal told our reporter.

Tennis fans in India too celebrated the news and hoped that finally the government was taking steps to promote different sports rather than just Cricket. Fans wanted Nandal to win the Australian Open title and then come to India, riding on an elephant, to receive the Padmashree award. Although there was a minor scuffle amongst the fans over the choice of Nadal or Federer for winning the title, they all wanted Nadal to come to India.

When Faking News tried to get the government opinion if they would provide an elephant to Nadal, we found that the authorities were pretty hush-hush about the whole affair and were speaking equivocally on everything. We smelt something fishy, and on further investigation we were shocked to find out that Nadal’s Padmashree award was another goof up by the Padma Award committee. The government had scored a double fault.

Our investigation started from the moment we found out that Nadal’s name for the award was proposed by the Mainpuri unit of Youth Congress in Uttar Pradesh. Surprising as it was, because Nadal was not even an Italian tennis player, we decided to probe further. We were helped by the fact that the letter of recommendation written by Youth Congress had ‘Nadal’ written in all capital letters. We instantly knew it must be a name of some organization.

We looked up in the governed records to find out that NADAL actually stood for “National Authority for Dalits’ Advancement and Liberty “. It is an organization formed last year under the Societies Act of India and Rahul Gandhi was the president emeritus of NADAL. Local Youth Congress unit had proposed NADAL’s name for Padmashree award to recognize NADAL’s social work among the dalits of the area. Rahul Gandhi would have received the award on NADAL’s behalf.

It seems the Padma Award committee confused NADAL as being the tennis star Rafael Nadal because there was no mention of Rahul Gandhi in the letter of recommendation by Youth Congress. But we are still clueless as how the committee members could still categorize Rafael Nadal as a notable contributor in social service. Nevertheless, now the government is trying to cover up and make a virtue out of an unforced error.

“Rafeal Nadal has indeed done social service. He has tried to bring down the monopoly created by Roger Federer in the tennis world, and we thought we should recognize his talents.” was the lame excuse given by a committee member when we tried to probe what we are calling the 'Padmagate' scandal.

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

RoF(ae)l !! I suggest you modify the name for the social servant company to "Rahul Nadal" and prevent such goof ups in future.

And anyone who can fart(paad maarna) can become a pad ma(sh)ree here!!

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