The other morning, my wife left for work at 9. At 9.50 she called, almost in tears. It had taken her that long to travel 3km. Forty minutes later, she texted. She’d made another 2km and with 10 to go, she was done. She was turning around to come home.

As I recounted these facts at a recent gathering, I was told, in pretty much so many words, we had no right to complain as we’d spent so much time abroad. The logic of this was unassailable — not because it was tight, but because it made so little sense there was no short way to refute it.

First of all, Bengaluru can never be taken away from me. I was born in Bengaluru and spent the first 28 (highly formative) years of my life here. Whether I’ve since lived in Guntur, Ghana or Granada is nobody’s business. Second, I engage with the city on numerous levels: Let’s start with walking.

Every morning, I’m out walking the dog, engaging with the city’s sunrise quirks: The speeding school buses, the construction workers defecating in the open, the giant pile of illegally dumped garbage, not from the poor hutments along the road, oh no. This is garbage that has Trader Joe’s packaging, olive oil bottles and Carr’s water crackers boxes — refuse from wealthy homes flung from passing cars.

I walk everywhere on visits to the city too. I park the car in a central place and run all my errands and luncheon activities on foot, circling several kilometres around the Central Business District area.

Next up, running. I take a bitter dose every now and then as “cross-training” medicine and thus access a few kilometres around my home with a different set of expectations and requirements.

And if not on my own two feet, I’m usually on two wheels. I cycle around my neighbourhood on errands, commute into town and also go on training rides out of the city down various highways.

If not on the cycle, I’m frequently using the buses or driving a car. Driving. As opposed to being driven. Except for the cycling, my similarly “foreign-returned” wife, engages with the city on all of these levels.

If anyone has a right to “complain” about a city it’s the people who actually use it — wherever they’ve lived. In comparison, the person who denied my right, spends most of her time ensconced in a gated community. Local errands are performed by the house help — she never walks, uses a bus or cycles. When she does leave home, it’s in the back of an air-conditioned, chauffeur-driven MUV.

She doesn’t know it, but the city has beaten her. It’s locked her in and she runs her life by remote control. Not for her is the constant fight, but also not for her are unexpected riches — and yes there are many. Don’t think that when I complain, I seek to deride my place of birth. It’s part plain facts, part mourning and part hope. After all, it’s only if you have given up hope that you give up critical thinking.

I know that Bengaluru has a beating heart somewhere, but its arteries are clogged, dug up, potholed and broken. The roads — whether we like it or not — make a city’s soul, its very character. And there’s no better perch than a bicycle seat to celebrate and be punished by a city’s soul. I complain, sure, but that doesn’t keep me home. I will make it work or I will leave it all behind. The middle alternative of sitting in my gilded home 25 days a month is no way to live.

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in Bengaluru, India.