An Indian Story

I'm reading "English, August An Indian Story", by Upamanyu Chatterjee. It's a coming of age story and is beautifully written. The main character, Agastya (August) is in a boring, mind numbing civil service job in the back of beyond. He is extremely lonely and feeling displaced. The narrative takes you to a version of every day colourful, comical India and dissects the usual, "who am I and why am I here" questions in a unique way.

" He felt that one saw significant moments in time only retrospectively, glittering mocking jewels of past time, that left in their wake only regret and consequent desolation, the first cause of a series of atonements and attempts at reparation. Most men, like him, chose in ignorance, and fretted in an uncongenial world, and learnt to accept and compromise, with or without grace, or slipped into despair.... I want to know in the present, I want my reason, and not even my intuition, but my reason, to tell me, here, you are now master of your time to come, act accordingly. But it seemed incapable of directing significant action. Once he had believed that it was good to be rational, but now it seemed that his reason could never answer the overwhelming questions...One way out was to turn to the extra-terrestrial, to believe in that special providence; ... another was to slink away from having to think..."