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 RICHLY REWARDED (AP) - Indra Tamang, the Nepalese born butler who inherited two apartments in the Dakota building (background) from his wealthy employer, stands near the building in New York.
Indra Tamang was born in a mud huthouse in Nepal. The first person he met upon leaving was Man Ray. Indra is probably best known for his collaboration with Charles Henri Ford, but that's not all. He makes delicious tea and lets his big, pokerfaced tortoise swim in the bathtub.
Indra Tamang
Indra Tamang was given his first camera by Charles Henri Ford in the 1970s. He has since had many cameras and photographed everyone in New York. Studio 54 presented many opportunities and so did his travels. He takes photos and he writes little stories, often on the subject of food.
Loyalty turns Nepal farmer into NY butler, tycoon
June 3, 2010, 3:17pm
NEW YORK (AP) – 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 Kathmandu.
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?
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 Kathmandu 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 Kathmandu 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.
People think he’s now rich, but until the estate liquidates more assets and high inheritance taxes are subtracted, “I don’t have more money now than I did before,” he said. “I still have to live, pay my mortgage. ... And relax a little bit.”
Then he added, laughing, “We’re not talking about a couple of hundred million dollars like a rock star!”
Ruth’s three-bedroom apartment is on the market for $4.5 million. The art collection includes works by the late artist Pavel Tchelitchew — a Russian man who was Charles’ longtime partner and died in 1957.
Tchelitchew’s portrait of Ruth Ford sold in April at Sotheby’s for nearly $1 million, including buyer’s premium. Another auction of artworks is scheduled for Thursday in Paris, followed by three more Manhattan sales in the coming year.
Tamang is still recovering from the sensational headlines that surprised him in early May.
“The Butler Did It,” The Wall Street Journal wrote in breaking the inheritance story, which was followed by a media blitz that left him exhausted and confused, his phone ringing incessantly.
These days, his greatest pleasure is to take his 10-year-old daughter, Zina, to school and pick her up in the afternoon.
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