A chance encounter and a life of loyalty turn a man from a poor Nepal village into an NYC media sensation. Read the AP article on a twist of fate that created an unlikely millionaire:
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. – from AP