The Siege Of Krishnapur - Closing

The years go by and the Collector undoubtedly felt, as many of us feel, that one uses up so many options, so much energy, simply in trying to find out what life is all about. And so for being able to do anything about it, well ... It is hard to tell what he was thinking during this last conversation wit Fleury when he said: "Oh, ideas ..." After all, McNab had been right, had he not? The invisible cholera cloud had moved on. Perhaps he was thinking again of those two men and two bullocks drawing water from the well every day of their lives. Perhaps, by the very end of his life, in 1880, he had come too believe that a people, a nation, does not create itself according to its own best ideas, but is shaped by other forces, of which it has little knowledge.