User talk:Indratamang

Indra Tamang Verenadobnik/ap
NEW YORK - Indra Tamang was a teenage farmer in a Nepalese village without running water or electricity. He barely learned how to write and lived in a straw, mud and stone house with his parents before landing a hotel job in the capital of Katmandu.

But after befriending a well-to-do hotel patron, the young man started traveling the world, meeting the likes of Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Patti Smith, and living in New York, Paris and the Greek island of Crete. Almost four decades later, luck struck again: A Manhattan woman bequeathed Tamang her entire estate - including two apartments in the famed Dakota building off Central Park and her Russian surrealist art collection. After all, for 36 years, Ruth Ford and her brother relied on "Indra darling" - as she often called the now 57-year-old - to tend to their activities on three continents. He was ever present in the apartments he inherited, available around the clock as Ford's health deteriorated. She died in August at 98, leaving nothing to her estranged daughter and two grandchildren. So how does a dirt-poor teenager who speaks only Nepalese turn into a globe-trotting sophisticate - and now, a multimillionaire?

Started as a personable waiter

He started as a personable waiter whose fine table skills were noticed by a hotel guest - a Mississippi-born writer, photographer and gay cultural activist in his 60s named Charles Henri Ford. He hired Tamang in 1973, first to get groceries and the mail by bicycle to his Katmandu house, then to cook, too. Eventually, the bohemian artist taught Tamang how to use a camera and made him his photo assistant. He became a sort of surrogate son - a factotum who lived the adventures of Ford and his entourage. At one point, Ford, Tamang and a friend rode a Volkswagen minibus from Istanbul to Katmandu via Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. In Paris, home was a studio on Ile Saint-Louis, and Tamang took French lessons. And there was a house on Crete, where the American's young sidekick learned some Greek from local fishermen. In New York, they lived in a small apartment at the Dakota four floors above Ford's sister, Ruth Ford, a former actress, model, muse to artists and writers like William Faulkner, and widow of Hollywood actor Zachary Scott. The Nepalese emigre went along to celebrity-studded parties the siblings hosted or attended, taking pictures of famous figures that were later published in Charles Ford's books and exhibited in Manhattan galleries. Tamang also set up cameras for Ford for profiles of well-known faces.

Attention shifted from the brother to his ailing sister

As the years passed, his attention shifted from the brother to his ailing sister, who was losing her sight and hearing; ironically, the brother died first, in 2002. In recent years, Tamang was on call even at home in Queens with his wife and children. He skipped family vacations to take care of bills and appointments, organize papers and supervise Ruth Ford's home, though she had a maid. After her mother's death, Shelley Scott received "a modest settlement" negotiated with the attorney for the estate, said Arnie Herz, Scott's lawyer. Tamang agreed to the resolution, whose details remain confidential, Herz said. Scott is "very happy" for Tamang, Herz said, and she "personally did not make a penny out of the modest settlement, because she gave it all away." Her mother had sent her to boarding school as a young child, and the estrangement began, Herz said. "The mother was a socialite, hanging out with the rich and the famous, and I have the impression that the daughter did not receive the level of parenting she needed," Herz said. Now, he said, Scott lives a "simple, meaningful life, and she's not interested in bashing her mother."