Amal Moulik’s Crushed Azaleas follows Moulik from Santiniketan, where an early morning raga with Baba becomes his first memory, into a childhood shaped by India’s diplomatic world. Baba’s work takes the family through postings in Asia and Europe before Rome becomes the place where school and adolescence take hold. Moulik grows up between Bengali family expectation and an English education. He loves Ma, whose suffering changes the household around him in ways he can sense before he can understand. Holiday visits to India give him another version of home, one close enough to love yet no longer simple enough to claim. As Moulik moves toward adulthood, the memoir traces how a child tries to understand home when every place teaches a different rhythm of daily life.
Amal Moulik’s Crushed Azaleas is beautifully written, and the author’s recollections are so incredibly sharp that he even remembers exact conversations and can repaint a scene in remarkable detail. I cannot imagine a child having such a steep learning curve and the courage to write about it so well. The punishment after the broken window in Japan shows his command of pacing, as the child’s fear grows through silence before Kiko-san changes the meaning of the moment. The London playground exchange with Rachel shows how naturally Moulik can place religion inside a child’s conversation and trust the reader to understand its importance, while his reflections on Marc lean into music becoming the lasting shape of their friendship. His closing portrait of Ma and Baba is solid, giving the memoir its deepest personal reckoning, and coming across as both cathartic and empowering. Readers who enjoy memoirs of everyday people in extraordinary, multicultural circumstances will adore this.
