Notes

03 / READING FICTION

Who still has to go home?

By Amrinder Sahota · 5 November 2026

An ending can settle a plot without settling a household.

The contest is over. The verdict is announced. The last page tells us who won. Yet someone still has to go home, decide what to tell a child, or live beside a person they cannot forgive.

That is a useful place to pause as a reader. Before asking whether an ending was satisfying, ask whose ordinary life must continue beyond it. The answer may change which scene feels most important.

Try a small notebook exercise with the next story you finish: write down one person who survives its central conflict, then one practical question the ending leaves that person. Keep your imagined answer separate from what the story actually says.

Sometimes the last page is less a full stop than a change in who deserves our attention.

02 / EVERYDAY LIFE & TECHNOLOGY

Leave a little room

By Amrinder Sahota · 30 October 2026

A loading circle is very good at making a few seconds feel like an inconvenience. So is a typing indicator. Even before the message arrives, we have been invited to wait for it.

I wonder what happens when we stop treating every pause as a space that needs filling. A queue can be a queue. A kettle can take its time. A conversation can have a quiet moment without anyone reaching for a screen.

This is not a proposal to throw the phone into the sea. The phone has the map, and we may need to get home.

It is a smaller thought for the weekend: leave one ordinary pause unfilled, and see what you notice.

01 / FAMILY & BELONGING

The question after the name

By Amrinder Sahota · 28 October 2026

A surname fits neatly into a box on a form. The stories attached to it are less cooperative.

I am interested in the moment a family name stops being an answer and becomes a question. Where did this story come from? Who remembers it differently? What would count as evidence?

Belonging can leave room for those questions. It does not have to pass an exam before it matters.

Read further: Punjabi family history: a place to begin

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