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I grew up believing Mumbai was it. The city. The only city, really, if you were serious about life.

Delhi was where politicians lived, where people drove too fast and talked too loud, where the air turned grey in November and everyone blamed it on farmers.

Mumbai, on the other hand, was grit and glory. It was the local train at 8 am, body pressed against body and somehow making it to work on time and feeling like you'd earned something. We wore the city’s difficulty like a badge.

Then I moved to Delhi.

The first few weeks, I was still a tourist in my own relocation. Everything felt novel – the wide roads, the slightly bewildering politeness of auto drivers who didn’t use the meter.

But now the newness has worn off. Three months later, the city has become ordinary to me – and so I’m starting to see it clearly. And what I see clearly is this: Mumbai, the city I spent years romanticising, has been failing its residents for a long time. We just never admitted that because it felt like betrayal.

Delhi’s metro is a civic achievement. I say this as someone who has spent years riding Mumbai’s local trains and convincing myself that the chaos...

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