Read the given passage and answer the four questions that follow.

The postmaster's office was located in the village of Ulapur. It was a quaint village, there was an indigo plantation nearby, and so the manager-an Englishman goaded by the need for communication-had arranged for the setting up of a post office.

The postmaster was a young man from Calcutta. Stationed here, away from the known limits of civilization, he often felt like a fish out of water. The plantation workers seemed to have their own community. Social miscegenation between two different classes of people seemed all but impossible.

In truth, the boy from the city wasn't good at mixing with people. Uprooted and exiled to a foreign land, his feelings oscillated between arrogance and shame. He rarely met any of the villagers. He wrote poems: poems of endless waiting, poems in which the marrow of life seemed to resonate with the faint tremble of young leaves, where the memory of existence was rejuvenated by the sight of rain clouds. He longed for the security of metal roads, of tall houses which blocked the sight of clouds in the open sky. The city was spreading its tentacles, calling him back.

The postmaster's salary was meager. Evenings would arrive with plumes of smoke rising from the cowshed. The evening would be as still as the cadence of lost poetry, the silence all around would shake the fault lines of the heart; and as all of this would take place, the postmaster would light his lamp.

What does the line "his feelings oscillated between arrogance and shame" reflect about the postmaster's state of mind?

He was struggling with his conflicting feelings.

The correct answer is Option (3) → He was struggling with his conflicting feelings.

The word "oscillated" means to swing back and forth regularly, like a pendulum. In the context of feelings, it means his emotions were continually switching between two opposing states:

• Arrogance: Likely stemming from his city background and higher social status compared to the plantation workers/villagers.

• Shame: Likely stemming from his inability to cope with his new surroundings, his social awkwardness ("wasn't good at mixing with people"), and his feeling of being "Uprooted and exiled."

The continuous swinging between these two strong, conflicting emotions shows he was in a state of internal struggle, making the option "He was struggling with his conflicting feelings" the most accurate interpretation.