such a long journey meaning

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long journey

Meanings of long and journey.

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(Definition of long and journey from the Cambridge English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

• Examples of long journey

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singing or playing notes that are at the right pitch (= level) or that agree with others being sung or played

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• Definition of long
• Definition of journey
• Other collocations with journey

Example sentences long journey

Definition of 'journey' journey.

Definition of 'long' long

Cobuild collocations long journey, browse alphabetically long journey.

• Long Island Sound
• long journey
• long jumper
• All ENGLISH words that begin with 'L'

Related terms of long journey

• Long Day's Journey Into Night

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A Long Journey Summary & Analysis by Musaemura Zimunya

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"A Long Journey" is a free verse poem by the Zimbabwean poet Musaemura Zimunya. Zimunya included "A Long Journey" in his book Country Dawns and City Lights , published in 1985—just five years after Zimbabwe attained independence from Britain. In “A Long Journey,” a Zimbabwean speaker describes the effects of industrialization and the complex changes that their village undergoes during British colonial rule, appreciating the many comforts and conveniences of modern life while also struggling with the immense legacy of suffering and violence that preceded it.

• Read the full text of “A Long Journey”

The Full Text of “A Long Journey”

“a long journey” summary, “a long journey” themes.

The Complicated Legacy of Colonialism

The Cost of Development

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “a long journey”.

Through decades that ... ... long long journey

When the motor-car ... ... every village boy

With the arrival ... ... behind the horizons

Lines 12-13

Such a long ... ... bush to concrete

Lines 14-17

And now I ... ... my mother country

Lines 18-22

I fight in ... ... rain and cold

Lines 23-27

We have fled ... ... rattling around me

Lines 28-30

We moved into ... ... for our shirts

“A Long Journey” Symbols

City Lights

• Line 25: “the halo of ,” “tower lights”
• Line 28: “We moved into the lights”

“A Long Journey” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Lines 1-2: “decades that ran like rivers / endless rivers of endless woes”

Alliteration

• Line 1: “ran,” “rivers”
• Line 3: “jail”
• Line 4: “journey”
• Line 5: “car came”
• Line 6: “cart”
• Line 7: “but,” “bicycle,” “Britain”
• Line 8: “boy”
• Line 17: “capital,” “country”
• Line 19: “road runs”
• Line 23: “witches,” “wizards”
• Line 26: “blood”
• Line 27: “bones”
• Line 1: “rivers”
• Line 2: “endless rivers of endless woes”
• Line 3: “pick and shovel sjambok and jail”
• Line 4: “long long”
• Line 12: “long travail”
• Line 13: “long journey”
• Line 22: “wind and rain and cold”
• Line 24: “long long road”

Extended Metaphor

• Line 4: “O such a long long journey”
• Line 13: “a long journey from bush to concrete”
• Lines 19-22: “but my road runs and turns into dusty gravel / into over-beaten foot tracks that lead / to a plastic hut and soon to a mud-grass dwelling / threatened by wind and rain and cold”
• Lines 28-30: “We moved into the lights / but from the dark periphery behind / an almighty hand reaches for our shirts.”
• Line 3: “through pick and shovel sjambok and jail”
• Line 6: “the sledge and the ox-cart began to die”
• Line 15: “eighteen ninety”
• Lines 16-17: “new-found luxury / in this the capital city of my mother country”
• Lines 19-22: “dusty gravel / into over-beaten foot tracks that lead / to a plastic hut and soon to a mud-grass dwelling / threatened by wind and rain and cold”
• Line 23: “witches and wizards”
• Lines 26-27: “I hear the cry from human blood / and wicked bones rattling around me”

“A Long Journey” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Eighteen ninety
• Over-beaten foot tracks
• (Location in poem: Line 3: “through pick and shovel sjambok and jail”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Long Journey”

Rhyme scheme, “a long journey” speaker, “a long journey” setting, literary and historical context of “a long journey”, more “a long journey” resources, external resources.

Zimbabwe's History — Read a brief history of Zimbabwe via the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Zimunya Sings — Watch a video of Zimunya performing.

A Brief Biography — Learn more about Zimunya's life and work.

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SUCH A LONG JOURNEY

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, such a long journey.

India is the closest we can come in today's world to the London of Charles Dickens , with its poverty and wealth side by side in a society teeming with benevolence and intrigue, eccentrics and thieves, the suspect and the saintly. "Such a Long Journey," filmed on location in Bombay, is a film so rich in atmosphere it makes Western films look pale and underpopulated. It combines politics, religion, illness and scheming in the story of one family in upheaval, and is very serious and always amusing.

The story, set in 1971 at the time of the war between India and Pakistan, is based on the novel of the same name by Rohinton Mistry , an Indian now living in Toronto. I haven't read it, but I have read his latest novel, the magnificent A Fine Balance, which has the same ability to see how political issues impact the lives of the ordinary and the obscure. Mistry's novels have the droll irony of Dickens, as when a legless beggar and a beggarmaster turn out to be brothers, and the beggarmaster is so moved that he buys the beggar a better cart on which to push himself around.

"Such a Long Journey" takes place mostly in and around a large apartment complex, its courtyard and the street, which the municipal authorities want to widen so that even more choking diesel fumes can cloud the air. We meet the hero, Gustad ( Roshan Seth ), in the process of defending the old concrete wall that protects his courtyard from the street, and later he strikes a bargain with an itinerant artist ( Ranjit Chowdhry ), who covers the wall with paintings from every conceivable religious tradition, with the thought that all of the groups represented will join in defending the wall.

A greater struggle is in store for Gustad. A Parsi whose family has fallen on hard times, works in a bank, and is asked by Major Jimmy ( Naseeruddin Shah ), a friend from long ago, to hide and launder some money. The go-between ( Om Puri ) implies these are official Indian government funds being secretly transferred to finance the war against Pakistan in Bangladesh. (The movie doesn't require us to know much about modern history in the subcontinent, since the story works entirely in terms of the personal lives of its characters.) Gustad is a good and earnest man, who has adopted the local idiot as a kind of surrogate son, who is the unofficial mayor of his building, who is always on call to help his neighbors, who dotes on his little daughter, and bursts with pride that his son, Sohrab (Vrajesh Hirjee) has been accepted by the Indian Institute of Technology. Alas, Sohrad doesn't want to go to IIT; he hates engineering and wants to be an artist, and Gustad implores him to reconsider.

Gustad's relationship with his wife has elements of an Indian "Honeymooners." The kitchen is her turf, where she defiantly spends long hours in consultation with a neighbor woman who Gustad considers to be a witch (i.e., she has a different set of superstitions than his own). Their marriage is strong when it needs to be, as when their daughter falls ill with malaria.

All of these stories are told against the backdrop of the others who live in the apartment complex, the street vendors outside, and those who are understood to have claims to portions of the courtyard or sidewalk. There is great poverty in India, but because it is so common, it's more of a condition of life than a particular shame, and Gustad is on easy terms with the people who live in, as well as on, his street.

Roshan Seth is not a name well known in the West, but his face is familiar; he played Nehru in " Gandhi ," the heroine's father in " Mississippi Masala ", the father in " My Beautiful Laundrette ," and it is only poetic justice that he starred in the film of Dickens' Little Dorrit. In this role (which won him a Canadian Genie as the year's best actor), he plays an everyman, an earnest, worried, funny character always skirting on the edge of disaster, exuberantly immersed in his life. The way he masterminds the defense of the precious wall is brilliant, but the way he deals with its fate is even more touching, because it is simply human.

The director, Sturla Gunnarsson , is Icelandic, suggesting the universality of this story; the writer, Sooni Taraporevala , also wrote "Mississippi Masala" and "Salaam Bombay!". Their film is interesting not simply in terms of its plot (the politics, the money) but because of the medium it moves through--the streets of Bombay. It suggests a society that has more poverty than ours, but is not necessarily poorer, because it has a richer texture of daily life. " American Beauty " could not be an Indian story; it would be too hard to imagine Indian city dwellers with that much time to brood and isolate.

"Such a Long Journey" will run for two weeks and is part of the Shooting Gallery series now playing at Loews Cineplex theaters in 19 cities.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Such A Long Journey (2000)

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Touched with fire

A t the end of May 1997, 50 years after India's independence, 11 Indian writers were brought together in London by the New Yorker magazine for a group photograph celebrating the world-wide success of contemporary Indian writing. For the authors concerned it wasn't too easy to pose as the latest, hottest literary clique from the Asian sub-continent since most of them had never met.

Bill Buford, the New Yorker's fiction editor, found it hard to explain why he had selected this particular first XI, agreeing that "no one generalisation seems to characterise Indian fiction". The awkward phrase "South Asian writers" had come to mean an author from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh who had left his or her birthplace. You might as well speak of a departure lounge of writers. All that linked them was flight: with the exception of Arundhati Roy, they all lived abroad. Rohinton Mistry - who had grown up in Bombay's Parsee community - in Toronto; Salman Rushdie, also born in Bombay, was in hiding from the fatwa in London. Romesh Gunesekera (Sri Lankan) was also in London. Amit Chaudhuri, born in Calcutta like Vikram Seth, was completing a doctorate at Oxford; Seth lived in and wrote about California. Vikram Chandra, born in Delhi, was in Boston.

Sonny Mehta, president and editor-in-chief of Alfred Knopf in New York, and Mistry's American publisher, says: "They do have a few things in common, but many more differences. There's a wonderful story-telling tradition that is alive and well, and Indian writers share this heritage, this type of narrative experience; but India is so huge, with such diversity from religion to language to background, including caste, which is more powerfully divisive than the linguistic differences in Europe, that it's hard to call them a coherent group."

Mistry, whose second novel, A Fine Balance, had just been published, didn't feel in the least like a member of this group. Very much a literary loner by choice, he was disconcerted to find Amit Chaudhuri present. Six years earlier, when Mistry was still largely unknown, Chaudhuri (from a Hindu family) had written about Mistry's prize-winning first novel, Such A Long Journey. His review in the London Review of Books began: "The Parsees of Bombay are pale, sometimes hunched, but always with long noses. They have a posthumous look which is contradicted by an earthiness that makes them use local expletives from a very early age; and a bad temper which one takes to be the result of the incestuous intermarriages of a small community."

Mistry, known for his courtesy and reserve, had not reacted at the time. Now, as the chosen authors were being encouraged to look relaxed and friendly for the photograph, a startling and uncharacteristic incident took place. Ardashir Vakil (another Parsee) recalls: "At first I was very impressed by how quiet and in a way gracefully withdrawn Rohinton was. It was six years since the LRB review and he'd obviously made a massive effort to keep it all cool. Amit Chaudhuri came over and said to me, 'Hello, hello, how are you?' - and at that point Rohinton turned round and was suddenly very angry. He said to Amit, 'How could you have written that piece?'"

Mistry's memory of the incident differs. "Amit... pulled me into it. I did say, 'If it had been any other minority - Jewish for instance - what you wrote would have been completely unacceptable.' But I didn't feel anger. Shock, perhaps." It was quickly smoothed over, but Vakil adds, "I don't know if Amit had planned to stay for the lunch afterwards but he didn't; he left - the only one to do so, I think."

Mistry had probably come across such bias before, since the favours shown to Parsees by the British in India continued to rankle with many Hindus and Muslims. Chaudhuri must have known that his remarks would offend Mistry, whose family was imbued with the ancient Zoroastrian religion. The fire temple and its slow, archaic rituals feature in his three novels, especially the latest, Family Matters, published this month. Mistry admits , "I'm not a practising Parsee but the ceremonies are quite beautiful. As a child I observed [them] carefully in the same way as I did my homework, but it had no profound meaning for me. Zoroastrianism is about the opposition of good and evil. For the triumph of good, we have to make a choice. We can enlist on the side of good by prospering, making money and using our wealth to help others."

Today, Parsees risk becoming extinct. Their numbers have fallen to a bare million world-wide, of whom 70,000 live in India, 12,000 of those in Bombay, among them Mistry's younger brother Cyrus, a writer and playwright. He says, "To the extent that Rohinton's novels are about Parsees, he is chronicling a vanishing world. His picture is accurate." But Firdaus Gandavia, a Parsee writer and teacher also based in Bombay, thinks Mistry is out of touch. "He is stuck in the groove of the 70s when he left India and went to Toronto. His concerns seem distant to anyone actually living in Bombay; so much more has happened in the meantime."

Mistry counters, "I would say my Bombay is rooted in fact, but I'm writing about a city that has disappeared. In 1975, when I left, its population was less than half what it is today, and that transforms a city in unimaginable ways. If I'd never left I would have adjusted and learned the mechanisms for coping, as the other 14 million inhabitants have. Today when I go back I feel like a marathon runner who's no longer in training."

This re-invention of the past, seen with the sharp eyes of a child and then filtered through veils of nostalgia, is common to writers in exile. Bruce Westwood, Mistry's Canadian literary agent and friend, says: "Rohinton has been a Canadian citizen and resident of Toronto for 27 years now. He has lived here for longer than he lived in India, but his books are still set in the Bombay of his youth, reinvented with perfect recall. At times he seems to have idealised it into a childhood paradise, like Nabokov's Russia."

Indian politics and religion may have been turbulent in the 50s and 60s, but to a happy and secure child it was like Eden before the Fall. Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay on July 3 1952, the middle son of three, with one younger sister. His father worked in advertising, first as a copywriter then as an account executive, while his mother supported her husband and nurtured her family. "She was happy in that role," Mistry remembers, "doing the miracle that all mothers perform of making what was barely enough seem like abundance. We didn't have new clothes and shoes as often as we might have liked but we were certainly better off than half the population."

His first memory is of starting kindergarten, aged about three. "I felt a combination of fear and expectation. There were all these other children around me in such numbers for the first time. We'd been given little toys and engines to play with. Our parents were huddled at the door and I kept checking to make sure they were still there and playing conscientiously, very aware of being 'a good child at play'. As I got older I was a normal little boy with marbles and tops and kites."

Was he a watchful child? "I think all children observe the world with this intensity. Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all. No one ever said about me, 'Oh, how quietly he sits watching us,' and at this stage I wasn't aware of the writer in me." His younger brother Cyrus confirms: "None of us in the family had much clue as to him becoming a writer. I find his books as fictional as any other writer's work. He's using his creative imagination -and yet there are some things I recognise."

Mistry agrees that his first two books - a short story collection called Tales From Firozsha Baag, and the novel Such A Long Journey - derived partly from a desire to capture the words and phrases of long ago. "There's always this question about fiction: how autobiographical is it? There is always something special about the effortless way one observes things as a child." He enjoyed his schooldays in the late 50s. "I'm absolutely certain that by the time I entered school I could read, so I must have learned in pre-primary. I remember Enid Blyton's Noddy books and then the more grown-up Enid Blytons. She gave me hours of pleasure. So did Richmal Crompton, author of the William books, which I found very funny."

Later, in the school library, he found Biggles and Bulldog Drummond, Agatha Christie and the Saint books by Leslie Charteris. "I remember the proudest day of my life was when I asked the principal, Father de Souza, if I could take out two books a week and he said, 'All right,' inscribed TWO on my library card and signed it."

From this early reading he got the impression of an England that both mirrored and glamourised the reality; a country where confident, laughing children shared exciting adventures with a bouncy, barking dog while their elder sisters flirted languidly over tea on the lawn and their parents conducted wars of attrition with servants and tradesmen. Mistry knows this innocent sunlit England never really existed, but just as the Bombay of his novels is a literary construct, so was that England: part wishful thinking, part imagination and part truth. In person he has old-fashioned good manners and is immaculately neat, dressed like an English country gentleman in a dark brown tweed jacket and corduroy trousers. He is charming; soft-voiced and humorous. Every sentence is perfectly shaped without being portentous. His hands frame small, precise gestures as he talks.

At that time most middle-class Indian boys still attended schools run by Christian missionaries. Mistry went to St Xavier's High School, a Jesuit foundation. Its curriculum was based on that of the English public schools and his teachers revered and taught the great British playwrights and novelists. The boys were made to learn reams of Victorian poetry by heart, to study Dickens and Shakespeare, take grammar at least twice a week and parse passages from the Radiant Readers ("nobody does parsing any more," he laments).

He has never resented this colonial indoctrination, perhaps because Parsees enjoyed a special status. As Ardashir Vakil explains, "They were hugely favoured by the British, who saw them as a cut above the [other] natives because of their pale skin and more western culture." Yet, says Mistry, it had its disadvantages: "Part of the tragedy of the educated middle classes in Bombay was this yearning for something unattainable that came from what they had read. Would that sense of a future elsewhere have been avoided if we had concentrated on an Indian literary canon? I don't know."

Indian teenagers were much more protected, and matured later, than those in the west. Mistry recalls, "At 16 I would have had the sophistication of a western 13-year-old. We were more docile to adult discipline. I didn't rebel at all, except very mildly in my last year at school. It was made easy for me because my older brother had paved the way, so all the battles had been fought. My parents left me free to go out with girls."

He didn't have to battle for the right to marry for love since Parsees didn't believe in arranged marriages. "I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition." It is tempting to see his courtship with Freny Elavia echoed in that of Dina and Rustom, the young couple in A Fine Balance who meet at concerts and keep their relationship secret, but as always, the degree to which the books and his life coincide is obscure.

Rohinton and Freny both attended Bombay University. "There was a societal expectation that boys should study something 'worthwhile' like medicine or engineering, a BSc in physics or chemistry; something that would lead to a career, an idea I supported. It was OK for girls to do English because they were going to marry and have children, but it was thought essentially frivolous. At this stage I wasn't aware of the writer in me and under this subtle but ever-present pressure I chose mathematics. Music was still my main interest: I was in a folk-singing act à la Bob Dylan; I gave performances and for a while even regarded it as a possible career. Because of that and other distractions, I took longer to complete my last year, so Freny graduated ahead of me. She had already decided to emigrate to Canada. It was difficult letting her go, but the understanding was that I should follow the next year. She had some family there and I knew she'd be looked after properly."

With his close and harmonious family life, a "worthwhile" degree and a wide circle of friends, why did Mistry leave? "The immediate reason was Freny. But 'going abroad' was a powerful idea that lots of people latched on to. No one really thought through all these questions as carefully as they should have done, but the predominant factor would have been the idea that only in the west could you find a job to fulfil your expectations and ambitions. Today, India has much more to offer, but in the 60s and 70s the educated Indian middle class grew up with the idea that to make a success of your life you had to settle and work abroad."

Rohinton and Freny were married in Canada in 1975, soon after he joined her. She was already working as a secretary and later qualified as a teacher. She taught at a small local primary school in Brampton, the nondescript Toronto suburb where they settled and continued to live for nearly 20 years. Looking back, he says, "Life wasn't nearly as hard for us as it would have been in Bombay. We got an apartment right away; in Bombay you might spend 10 years waiting for somewhere to become vacant, meanwhile living with your parents.

"At the material level, Canada fulfilled all our expectations. We had the things people are supposed to have - a stereo system and records, which we probably couldn't have afforded in Bombay. Everything was clean and orderly, there was no litter in the streets and you could always get on to buses and trains. There wasn't the same variety of people on the streets that you see now. You were a visible minority yet almost invisible because of the small numbers. I was not conscious of prejudice." Yet in one of his early short stories he wrote: "Canadian society will consist of a mosaic of cultures - that's their favourite word, mosaic - instead of one uniform mix, like the American melting pot. If you ask me, mosaic and melting pot are both nonsense, and ethnic is a polite way of saying bloody foreigner."

At any rate, the young couple's first friends in Canada were mainly from the Indian community, although they were soon socialising with colleagues from Freny's school or the bank where Rohinton worked. "I found Canadian society pleasant enough, if provincial, but that would have been almost a relief after the frenetic pace of Bombay. It was an incurious society - which certainly didn't bother me. My wife and I were a happily self-contained unit." They have never had children.

He quickly found work as a clerk at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. "It wasn't a conscious choice, just something I fell into. Work at the bank didn't mean anything; it wasn't satisfying, so in 1978 to make life more interesting we both enrolled in courses at the University of Toronto. At that time most employers subsidised your fees and the bank agreed to help with mine. I studied English and philosophy and eventually we both got a second bachelor's degree." He continued at the bank and in 1982 wrote his first short story. "I was testing the water," Mistry says, "writing at the weekends. Had I known that the short story is one of the most difficult literary forms I probably wouldn't have attempted it."

In 1987 his short-story collection called Tales From Firozsha Baag was published to much critical praise and went on to win a number of literary prizes. "I was then curious to see how I'd fare with a novel. The central plot incident in Such A Long Journey was taken from something I'd heard my parents and their friends talking about in 1971, at home. A Parsee major had embezzled money from a bank to finance the resistance movement in East Pakistan. Within our community the main question was 'How could a Parsee have done this?'."

A few early friendships have survived but Mistry's growing professional success brought increased distance and new friends. Bruce Westwood, his agent in Canada, says, "Rohinton's not a gregarious man. Toronto has a very vibrant writers' community of which he is a part - but he also keeps his distance." Mistry disagrees: "I don't think there exists a literary coterie in this city and even if it did, I wouldn't be interested to join."

Success may not have made Mistry arrogant but it does seem to exaggerate his natural reserve. While everyone speaks of him with affection and respect, quite a few also admit to being slightly intimidated by him. Sonny Mehta, his publisher and friend, says: "When he comes to New York he calls me and we meet for a drink and sit and chat. I look forward to seeing him whenever I can but he's very self-contained and does things when he chooses. He's got great composure and grace and these are rare things that characterise his writing too."

The Faculty of Arts at Ottawa awarded Mistry an honorary doctorate in 1996. David Staines, the dean, gave the laudatory address and has since got to know Mistry well. He says: "In person he's quite warm and can be very funny, but he's not demonstrative. I've been to dinner at his house and it was a wonderful evening. Freny keeps most of the conversation going: she's a perfect foil to him, pretty, bright, totally outgoing; a good cook - both Indian and European cuisine. Rohinton takes everything in - he has to, to write the way he does. The night of the dinner party he just watched. But he's a totally decent, honest person. He doesn't want to pursue fame and the things that are fleeting."

He freezes up when asked about his wife (she now teaches English at Branksome Hall, a private high school in Toronto). Their private life is extremely private. Mistry dedicates each of his books to his wife with a simple "For Freny". He will only say that her contribution to his writing is crucial. "While I'm composing the only judgment I rely on is mine: my instinct or intuition. But when it's done my wife reads it first and I value her opinion. Probably not enough to make any radical alterations, but so far it's never happened that she's asked for them."

John Riley, his editor at Faber, adds: "He could be compared to Nabokov in his dependence on his wife. In all our dealings there's never any gossip or chit-chat - our conversations are always about the work, about sentences - he doesn't ever talk about any other subject. Yet he's not forbidding, let alone rude: he's very gentle and considered, the picture of courtesy and thoughtfulness."

From the beginning of his writing career he attracted critical attention and awards. Each of his books has won, or been nominated, for a major literary prize. His London agent, Derek Johns, says, "Rohinton is very pragmatic about winning prizes - he knows they bring more readers." Perhaps the most remarkable proof of this was being chosen last year as Book of the Month by Oprah Winfrey on American TV - an accolade that prompted Knopf to print an extra 700,000 copies, half a million of which sold. Bruce Westwood elaborates: "After September 11, Oprah wanted a Book Club choice that would introduce American readers to the east. She picked A Fine Balance, only her second non-American book after Bernhard Schlink's The Reader." Mistry was short-listed for the Booker prize for both his first and second novels: Such A Long Journey in 1991, and again for A Fine Balance in 1996. There are hopes that Family Matters will do even better.

It is hard to avoid the feeling that his books are a distillation of his own life before he left Bombay. "Writers write best about what they know," he says. "In the broad sense, as a processing of everything one hears or witnesses, all fiction is autobiographical - imagination ground through the mill of memory. It's impossible to separate the two ingredients."

Has he yet achieved his life's ambition? He smiles: "I count myself blessed that I'm able to follow this line of work. I didn't grow up with the burning ambition to be a writer - I never even thought of it as a possibility. It seemed such a huge thing, it never occurred to me that I could aspire to it."

Life at a glance Rohinton Mistry

Born: July 3 1952, Bombay, India.

Education: St Xavier's High School, Bombay; Bombay University (BA mathematics, 1974); University of Toronto (BA, English and Philosophy, 1984).

Married: 1975 Freny Elavia.

Career: 1975-'85 clerk and accountant, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,Toronto.

Publications: 1987 Tales From Firozsha Baag (short stories); Novels - '91 Such A Long Journey; '95 A Fine Balance; 2002 Family Matters.

Awards: 1991 Such A Long Journey - Commonwealth Writer's prize for best book, Governor General's Award for fiction,Giller prize for Canadian fiction; '96 A Fine Balance - Giller Prize and Governor General's Award.

· Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry is published by Faber price £16.99. To order a copy for £14.99 plus p&p (UK delivery 99p or £1.99 for 1st class), call the Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979.

• Rohinton Mistry

10 Words to Describe a Difficult Journey

By Ali Dixon

If you want to present a challenging path a character in your book is taking, illustrate it using the following 10 words to describe a difficult journey.

Challenging or straining ; reaching or surpassing one’s endurance.

“The journey was a long and  trying  one, and by the end of it, they were all relieved to have finally reached their destination.”

“After their  trying  journey there, they took a long, well-earned rest.”

How It Adds Description

If a journey is difficult, then that can require a serious test of endurance.  Describing  the journey as a trying one can emphasize how difficult the journey was. You can use this word with some flexibility as well since a journey could be physically or emotionally trying.

Extending a significant distance or spanning a great length .

“Getting to the other side of the mountains would entail a  long , difficult journey.”

“If they wanted to reach their destination in time, they knew they would have to head out on their  long  journey as soon as possible.”

There are a lot of things that can make a journey difficult, including the length of the journey itself. Putting your character on a long journey can add even more tension to your story and make it more rewarding when your character finally reaches their destination.

Involving or imposing a burden .

“They all knew it would be a tiresome,  onerous  journey, so they made sure that they had packed all the supplies they would need.”

“She thought many times about giving up on her  onerous  journey, but she knew that what waited for her ahead would be worth all the trouble she had gone to.”

Onerous isn’t a word one sees often, so it can stand out to your readers. Seeing it can help to emphasize how much of a burden the adventure that your character is going on is to them.

4. Grueling

Punishing ; difficult to the point of exhaustion.

“After their long,  grueling  journey, they rewarded themselves with a hearty meal and a long, restful sleep.”

“Getting to the other side of the map would without a doubt be a  grueling  task, but it was one that the entire team was up for.”

Want to ensure that your readers know difficult the journey is on your character? Use the word grueling. This word can emphasize that not only is the journey hard, but it feels close to a punishment.

5. Exhausting

Extremely tiring .

“Since they had to plan for such an  exhausting  journey, they spent a long time beforehand making sure that they would have all the supplies they needed.”

“When he started on the road, he had been keen and bright-eyed, but by the end of the  exhausting  and challenging journey, all he wanted to do was rest.”

Something that is exhausting is more than just a little tiring. Calling the journey exhausting will help to describe both the physical state as well as the mental state your character is in when the journey is finally done.

Upward on an incline or hill ; against challenges.

“The  uphill  journey left them feeling nothing but tired by the end of it.”

“She knew that what she would find at the end of the road would be worth it, but the  uphill  climb was going to make things that much more challenging.”

The word uphill can be used literally to describe an inclined terrain your character must go up. You can also use it metaphorically to demonstrate that your character must face other challenges along the way to their destination.

7. Formidable

Causing feelings of apprehension or dread ; impressive of instilling feelings of wonder.

“He had no idea what he would find at the end of his  formidable  journey.”

“As she looked at the map in front of her, she considered what she would have to bring with her on such a  formidable  journey.”

If the journey that one of your characters is going on is quite daunting, then you can describe it as formidable. You can also use it in a slightly more positive sense to show that the journey inspires feelings of awe.

8. Intimidating

Causing a loss of confidence and inspiring feelings of timidity, fear, or anxiety .

“At first it had seemed like an easy adventure, but the more he thought about it, the more  intimidating  it became.”

“The map had seemed  intimidating  at the time, but now that she was well on her way, the road seemed much easier.”

If a journey looks like it’s going to be particularly long or hard, then it’s probably going to be pretty intimidating for the character going on it. This word will help describe the tension your character is experiencing.

Marked by difficult terrain ; challenging to travel through or across; not easy.

“The journey would be a  rough  one, and would require packing several days’ worth of supplies.”

“They would follow the  rough  road all the way to the end.”

The word rough can be used to describe the actual terrain that your characters are traveling across. You can also use it to describe the journey itself, as calling something rough means that it is challenging or not easy.

10. Satisfying

Rewarding ; causing feelings of contentment or pleasure by providing something needed.

“After such a difficult but  satisfying  journey, the team was rewarded with some good food and a few comfortable beds to sleep on.”

“She knew that despite all the challenges, the journey would be  satisfying , especially once she reached the hidden treasure.”

A difficult journey doesn’t have to be entirely negative! When your character finally reaches the end of their road, they’re likely to find a lot of satisfaction. Describing the relief and reward your characters have achieved through this journey will make it feel satisfying to your readers as well.

Such a Long Journey

70 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 15-22

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-8 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 summary.

Such a Long Journey takes place in Bombay, India, in 1971. The story begins with the main character, Gustad Noble, a Zoroastrian Parsi, performing his daily early morning prayers in the yard of his apartment complex, the Khodadad Building, as the compound slowly comes to life around him. Gustad is in his 50s but still strong and vital despite an accident a few years earlier that gave him a limp.

Miss Kutpitia , an elderly neighbor with a reputation “of being mean and cranky and abusive,” loudly berates the milkman (2). Miss Kutpitia has an interest in magic and spells, in finding “the hidden meaning of mundane events and chance occurrences” (4). Gustad’s wife, Dilnavaz , a petite woman of 44, is waiting for her turn with the milkman.

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