My grandmother, Diana Mellor, was born in Mussoorie, India. Activist, artist, storyteller, writer and something of an enigma and inspiration, I felt the way she was also an outlier like I was meant that perhaps we both came from another world. My father—her son—slipped between convention and this other dimension. Our curiosity, humour and mischievous nature run like a thread from her down the paternal line and continue through my own son. In my memory, she was one of those beings who always glowed with radiant light and I often consider her to be my real mother in terms of character traits and looks. Her silky slightly-strawberry blonde hair remained that way almost until her death in her 80s and, although I can’t claim to have kept my own grey at bay, I have her and my father’s big blue eyes that she would declare came around corners before I did.

It was once I had discarded the parts of my life and my Self that needed shedding and began to build (literally) from scratch, a new life and home that I began to fully comprehend how much of an influence her eclectic house, filled with treasures from her travels, motivated my own treasure-filled sanctuary.

In Colonial India, expats would go to the hill stations in the heat of summer and to give birth. Her Irish mother fit this demographic, hence the geography of her becoming in the world. As a judge in India in the early 1900s, her father was likely not one of the good guys and yet I do often wonder if Diana’s compassionate heart, deep wisdom and stoic acts of courage were a result of good modelling or bad; whether she became who she was because her father too was against the system of oppression or if who she became was in fact an act of rebellion. My father too was something of an outlier, acting perhaps unwitting in alignment with his mother’s core values despite them being somewhat unusual in the political climate of South Africa in the 70s and 80s. This is the genetic line I follow and one that has created a chasm between myself and a family that cast me out for my perspectives, my diversity and my differences.

How this relates to where I am right now and the way I choose to live my life—now that I have unshackled myself from the structures that kept me bound for most of my life—is the polyamory I am currently engaged in. It’s not what you think … let me explain.

Diana would dress up as a gypsy at our birthday parties and tell our fortunes, something quite intriguing in the societal construct of the 70s. In my memory this was a regular occurrence but I can’t actually remember if she told my fortune just the once or if it was my neurodivergent brain that held onto it for its mystery and, to a degree, a truth I would only fully unravel decades later.

When she told my fortune, she would tell me I would marry a man who rides two horses at once and I would spend my marriage stitching up his trousers. Although I am not sure I ever stitched up any trousers, both my husband and the lover I took after leaving him (ok, maybe a few more too) always had a couple of fillies to ride.

Despite this duplicitous behaviour by my then husband, I can’t help but wonder if the real cause for my divorce was in fact my own affair … with India.

Diana had, in her final years with Parkinson’s Disease, begun living in parts of her brain that transported her to the bygone era of riding on elephants through the jungles and seeing tigers. Ironically, this was when I got to know and understand her deeper and this is when the seed that would take another decade to germinate was planted in my psyche. 

I hadn’t intended to travel to India—the end of the 20th century saw me in London, working in Investment Banking and way too invested in a pseudo lifestyle to follow any gurus or hippies to a land I didn’t trust for its cleanliness or safety. But the airlines had other plans. Not being able to get from Nepal to our next destination, China, from any airport other than Mumbai, I plotted a route overland from Kathmandu to Varanasi, through Bodhgaya and Agra and touching into Rajasthan before an overnight bus ride down the west of the sub continent to the airport.

I didn’t intend to stray. I unwittingly fell in love. Returning to South Africa in 2004 was preceded by a two-month pilgrimage, beginning in Mussoorie and weaving around an extraordinary number of towns, villages and cities throughout India. I didn’t find Diana’s birth record, which was the deeper intention, but I forged a deeper bond with this lover.  It felt like I was cheating; the marriage couldn’t include such an intense lover. I fell deeper still in 2010—once separated from my husband—when I took my then 4-year-old backpacking for 5 weeks across the country.

After that, I sold my diamonds and my shoes and anything of value that I no longer needed, to fund tickets and travels back to arms so much more loyal than what my marriage and my subsequent lover gave me.

And I was faithful to her for over a decade. Until my gap year.

I fall in love with cities and towns and villages now like I once fell in love with men. From SriLanka in December 2023, I returned to India with resistance as though I was being forced back into a relationship with something I might have outgrown. She took me again, reluctantly at first and then I was hooked again … until I went to Nepal for a few months and decided this was definitely my greatest love.

So, no, I am not married or tethered to a man straddling horses any longer and the only stitching I am doing is the weaving of a new heart … straddling countries like lovers between whom I cannot choose.

Can I choose polyamory?