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?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → He was struggling with his conflicting feelings.
To oscillate is to swing back and forth between two states. Arrogance (feeling superior to the villagers) and shame (feeling out of place and inadequate) pull in opposite directions, so the line shows him torn between conflicting feelings.
Example: Her mood oscillated between hope and despair.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: He was indifferent towards the people around him. — Incorrect. Contradicted: arrogance and shame are strong feelings; indifference means feeling nothing.
Option 2: He felt victimized and ostracized by the villagers. — Incorrect. To be ostracized is to be shut out by a group. Misread: the passage says he was not good at mixing and rarely met the villagers; it does not say they excluded him.
Example: The boy was ostracized by his classmates after the incident.
Option 4: He could not make up his mind. — Incorrect. Wrong focus: this is about being unable to decide; the line describes swinging emotions, not a pending decision.