• Rose Matty had her first abortion when she was 14, lost her first husband four years later, walked out of a crumbling marriage 10 years after. But that’s just the first five minutes of her story. It’s what happened afterwards that makes the 46-year-old smile as she shifts the gears of her beat-up Toyota.• Beden Didie, at 37, still doesn’t know who his parents are. Brought up by an ‘aunt’ whom he calls ‘mom’, Beden brought his first taxi with a ‘home’ loan, brought two more five years later, sold them and took over a discotheque, failed, is now running a ‘unisex’ hair saloon. ‘‘No looking back, maan,’’ he grins.• Sajan T, 27, is from Kottayam, Kerala’s rubber country. His father’s plantation now a fledgling tourist resort, Sajan took up a job in ‘mad’ Mumbai, came across a construction company’s newspaper ad about a job abroad, ‘‘first thought it was somewhere in the Gulf.’’ Today, he makes around Rs 2 lakh a month, wants India’s cricketers to pose with him, even if he’s ‘‘just two pegs’’ down.St Lucia, on the map, looks like a teardrop. Free in 1979 after shuffling from England to France and back 14 times, this Caribbean tourist hotspot is also home to some happy people who have learnt to smile through the tears.About 43 km long and 29 km wide, St Lucia is eight hours from New York and three times the size of Washington, but if you are lucky enough, it will take you just three hours to connect the string of three lives that capture the flavour of this sunny island. Hire Rose to visit Beden and then bump into Sajan at the Rex Resorts.‘‘There are only six lady taxi drivers in St Lucia, as far as I know,’’ starts Rose. ‘‘It’s tough but it pays the bills. No, I don’t want to talk about the past. I am happy now. I have three children, the eldest is a 29-year-old son. I live for them now.’’ Her son living separately with friends, one daughter studying nursing in New York and the other in school here, Rose lives alone in a two-room shack between the two main points of St Lucia — Castries town and Rodney Bay.Rose says she still loves her first husband, but won’t even talk about the second who used to beat her every evening ‘in front of my children’. ‘‘One day, I just walked out, the children came with me,’’ she says. Her only friend now is the Toyota, though she prefers to pack up and be home by 6pm because she doesn’t ‘‘like the harassment by those men.’’At Beden’s salon, Rose prefers to wait outside. Inside, it’s a kaleidoscope of blonde strips, crimson hair shades, glistening bald heads and the pearly smile on the proud owner’s face. Here, Beden won’t walk around you, from one sideburn to another. He just gives a revolving chair a kick, and you are where he wants you to be.‘‘Don’t shake your head, maan, just listen to me,’’ he says. From zero, Beden now has six ‘friends’ working for him, but is already bored. That discotheque may have cleaned his pockets, but he says those were the days. ‘‘I used to sleep through the day. But I was an animal at night. It was all lights, girls and — No man, I am not going to say that.’’He’s had two girlfriends living in with him over the last five years, but won’t even think about ‘marriage and kids’. ‘‘I want to go to London. That’s the place to be. Maybe, I will be gone in a year or two. Who wants to stay in this small town?’’Leaving Beden to snip his way to his dreams, Rose is off with a wave at Rex Resorts, the Team India hotel. ‘‘You Indian, Bengali?’’ asks Sajan, his eyes are a bit glazed over. Waving to a bunch of families standing in one corner, Sajan says, ‘‘We are all Malayalees. We have come here to invite Sreesanth for a small get-together. These are the little things that keep us going here. Otherwise, it’s office to home, a visit to the mall, and the monthly cheque back home. Go back? But what will I do there?’’By now, the first wave of rain has started sweeping in, drenching the verandah outside the lobby. Sajan can’t stand the wait, he turns: ‘‘Want to come along? Just two pegs.’’
