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Bea Wapshare: A Satisfied Life
| Article
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11779 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,694 Words |
| Author
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Carole Ottesen
Carole Ottesen is an author and freelance writer who
specializes in gardening topics. She lives in Potomac,
Maryland. |
Complete satisfaction with one's life and accomplishments is something rarely attained. While in India, I learned it has less to do with position and material goods than it does with attitude. My teacher was not a Hindu holy man but a vivacious British tea planter.
I saw Bea Wapshare for the first time on the last day of 1984. We were guests at Bamboo Banks, a small private hotel near the South Indian game reserve of Mudumalai. I was a tourist, and she was a real guest, a friend of the proprietors, the Kodawallahs, a charming, sophisticated, and mildly eccentric Parsee family. Looking radiantly happy, she was sitting on the veranda, nursing a liter of Indian beer. She had bright blue eyes, dark chestnut hair, and was wrapped in sweaters against what was a chilly night for the Indian plains.
I thought she was about forty-five or fifty, but later I heard Mrs. Kodawallah mention how remarkable Bea was for her age, which she marvelled, dropping her voice, was seventy-nine. Even more remarkable, however, was the expression on Bea's face - an open, ready-for-anything look one associates with spirited children, coupled with an expression of peaceful satisfaction sometimes visible in the faces of Buddhist monks.
Not that there was anything pious about Bea. That night, she was the life of the party. A born storyteller, she delighted a rapt little group of newfound friends with a ready stock of tales. From across the veranda, I caught snatches about trumpeting bull elephants, vipers, and Kiki tribesmen. Mr. Kodawallah explained that Bea owned a tea estate in the Nilgiri hills.
Tea! The word was magical. Tea planters living in old stone bungalows nestled into misty hills was as unutterably romantic to me as a maharaja in a golden howdah. Kodawallah said that Bea owned the oldest tea plantation in South India. He gestured past the dark jungle toward what we couldn't see - the Nilgiri hills. "Just up there," he said, "the Compton Estate."
Bea's magnetic personality coupled with her tea connection made her irresistible. Later that evening, I sat down next to her and was rewarded with a warm smile. Bea rapidly reshaped my images of tea planters and tea plantations. "Compton's very small - only fifty acres," she explained, "I walk it every morning after muster - it keeps me trim."
"I thought tea planters rode horseback around their estates," I
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