The first stanza of the poem “Street Dog” by Amrita Pritam indicates that the speaker is someone who seems to be talking to their former spouse and is someone that they had recently divorced. Upon researching the author, I discovered that the speaker is most likely to be Pritam herself since she had left her former husband at some point in her life as well. I believe that the purpose of Pritam writing this poem is to reminisce about her life with her husband before having to sell their home and part ways. Pritam utilizes metaphors and personification to allude to human characteristics being apparent in household objects like pots and pans and vines in order to illustrate the emotional significance of the place and memories that were formed in that home. She states as if discussing this with her former spouse, that these emotional representations were not something she dwelled on too much, but instead she remembered the death and scent of a street dog that had died within a room of their home. I believe that this street dog’s death was not a literal event due to its lack of barking but rather a representation of the traumatic or “odorous” nature of the memories Pritam shared in her home with her former husband. Some additional background information that I have to reach this interpretation is that I am aware of the fact that Pritam lived in South Asia throughout the 1900s. Due to my own experiences with the geographic region, its current environment, and my cultural upbringing, animals of the canine variety there are often perceived as commonplace, unwanted, and as nuisances which may be seen as uncharacteristic to how dogs are treated here in the US. Understanding this perspective, I can see how the memory of a dead dog sitting in the middle of Pritam’s and her former husband’s home may result in her being annoyed by the memory’s resurrection. It’s also possible that given the context of living through the partition of India and Pakistan, the traumatic memories that Pritam is associating with her former home are religiously connected and in conjunction with having to leave her home and her husband since in history, many families were broken apart during that time. It is also important to note, that the only point throughout the poem where Pritam opts away from describing her own experiences when utilizing the word “I” is when she is describing the discovery of the street dog’s carcass which is when she uses the word “we”. It’s definitely possible that this is Pritam’s indirect way of associating blame or recalling the bad memories as something that occurred with her and her husband, but the only good parts of their union were when she was her own individual and in direct contact with the amenities throughout her house. In effect, this poem would essentially serve as a quick message to Pritam’s former husband to formally say, “my life was good when you weren’t in it”.  However, by the poem’s conclusion, I realized in doing so, Pritam also admitted to having thought about the good times as well. It’s ironic that despite saying “things such as these never cross my mind,” the lone fact that she even stated what “these” were alludes to the idea that she actually did think about them and that she did go through a period in which she reflected on her past. This contrast establishes a tone that makes Pritam’s emotional intentions for the poem vary in its meaning. Even though she’s telling her former spouse that her memories with him were insignificant, she’s still acknowledging and remembering those events, signifying that they must have been somewhat important to her. At the same time, however, she’s also pointing out to her former husband that even though she is thinking about their past together, her memories are plagued by one specific traumatic event that is thereby symbolized by the carcass of the dog lying in their former home.