Google Yourself

The next time you are at a loose end, try googling yourself. I did and brother, was the result interesting! Wish I could take a patent on it and make a few millions.

Google has at least six persons with my name, of whom two are particularly interesting . One a wrestler who did his thing in the USA in the 1970’s, the other a Stock Manager in Australia. And inbetween, a philantrophist , a smuggler of illegal immigrants, a missing collegian and an actor.

So to start with, a bit about a wrestler named Sabu Singh. I believe it is fairly common for pro wrestlers to name themselves after persons of different ethnicity. Sabu Singh, it turns out, happened to be a Puerto Rican and not an Indian as may be presumed. His name was Jose Gonzales who also called himself Invader 1. In June 1970, the 230lb wrestler was busy trying his favourite move called The DDT and a finishing move called the Heart Punch on fellow wrestlers with names like the Missouri Mauler, Jose Lothario, Dr Blood and Black Angel No 2. At the same time, a 130lb weakling called Sabu Singh was probably struggling with some Operations Research problem at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta halfway across the world.

Jose Gonzales was allegedly involved in the stabbing of another professional wrestler named Frank “Bruiser” Brody to death in the locker room in 1988. Although Jose went to trial, no charges were brought inspite of the presence of several eye witnesses.

The next namesake of interest was a half Aboriginal, half Chinese man. This Sabu Singh ended up marrying a white woman and became the first aboriginal Station Manager of a stock station in the Northern Territory in Australia. A woman from Darwin wrote a book on Sabu Singh in 2001. He was killed in a car which his son was driving around the time the book was published.

Google then takes us to another Sabu Singh from Colnbrook who was jailed for ten years for conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into the UK. He also allegedly had a small arsenal in his home.

Another Sabu Singh, an NRI (non-resident Indian) from Canada, played a key role in the spread of technical education in the Punjab. In 1979, he initiated the move to bring Industrial Training Institutes to the rural areas by helping to establish the ITI at Manuke and subsequently an ITI for women at Jagraon.

The next is one Sabu Singh Dunn, an alumnus of the University of New England (Class of 1989) who has lost touch with his alma mater. Can someone please tell him to get in touch with them?

Oh and how can one forget one really famous Sabu - the Elephant boy. Remember him from the film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”?

Thank God we have some God fearing, law abiding ones too. At least I hope so and if they are’nt, may they have called themselves “The Black Scorpion” or something like that so no one knows they are Sabu Singhs actually.

Interesting characters the Sabu Singhs of Googleland. Let me know how you fare when you google yourself.