it all goes to the butler

Saw this story on the front page of Yahoo!, about a wealthy Manhattan woman who bequeathed her entire estate to her butler, Indra Tamang, after 36 years of loyal service: Loyalty takes butler from poor Nepal village to NY. Not bad for a guy whose humble beginnings trace back to a Nepalese farming village:

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.

He's not exactly rolling in the dough -- the Fords weren't cash-rich, and their assets were mostly in property art. But still. Nothing left to her family? Everything to the butler? Indra must be one hell of a guy. Daaaamn.