India: A Million Mutinies Now - pg. 170

I thought of his grandfather, one of the five or 10 priests of the king of a small state in the east. He lived on very little; he had only his subsistence piece of land to keep him from absolute want, if the king withdrew his favour. He had no other skill - the little state at that time didn't require many skills. That was an arbitrary world, where change could come suddenly and overwhelmingly to a man. It was like the India which had been overrun again and again by this army and that; it was the India of unfinished monuments, of energy going to waste, creating an impression of randomness. That was a jungle, too. Did Pravas's grandfather live with something like that idea?