Dec 25, 2025
The morning began like any other — a quiet 6AM, a light Friday, nothing unusual. Then, in the middle of an ordinary day, the world cracked open. A headline flashed across my screen: Zubeen Garg gone in a diving accident in Singapore. It felt impossible, like the internet playing one of its cruel tricks. But link after link confirmed it. The truth hit like a blow. Only days ago he was singing in Mumbai, alive and electric. Now the silence felt unbearable.
By afternoon I called my brother in India. His voice carried the weight of a grieving state. Assam had gone still, he said — streets full of people with tear‑filled eyes, as if every home had lost someone of its own. Zubeen’s body was on its way back, and thousands were waiting for one final glimpse. I could picture it only faintly. We spoke for a few minutes, then the line went quiet, leaving the grief to settle where words could not.
The rest of the day slipped away from me. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t settle. I kept searching for answers, reading every update I could find, hoping something would undo the truth. Instead, the weight only grew heavier. My eyes burned, and suddenly they were wet. I kept asking myself why — why this grief for someone I had never met. I had admired so many artists around the world, mourned their passing, but never like this. Something about this loss cut deeper.
I’ve lived in the USA since 1995, far from the land that shaped me. I never met Zubeen, never saw him perform live, though in 2006 I came close to hosting him before visa issues stopped the visit. Yet his music had always been with me — a thread tying me back to Assam. Like so many of my generation, I grew up with Bhupen Hazarika and Zubeen Garg as the voices of home. Zubeen’s songs were more than music; they were poetry, paintings, truths wrapped in a voice that felt like it understood you. Maybe that’s why the loss felt so personal — because his songs had been personal all along.
I was born and raised in Assam, sharing the same soil and sky as Zubeen — but that’s where our paths touched and parted. I left home in 1986 for my studies, returned briefly, and then left again before moving to the USA in 1995. By the time Zubeen exploded onto the scene with Anamika in 1992, I was already far from Assam. I grew up with Bhupen Hazarika, Bishnu Rabha, Jyoti Sangeet, Borgeet — and Bihu running like blood through my veins. That was the Assam I carried with me when I left. And like so many Assamese living far from home, we held tightly to our culture, celebrating our festivals and music in distant lands. As Zubeen rose to become a cultural torchbearer, we embraced his songs too. The more I listened, the more I fell in love — with the lyrics, the melodies, the truth in his voice. His Bihu songs became our heartbeat here in the USA, the ones we danced to, choreographed, and tried to recreate with all the love we had for home.
Listening to his music and occasionally reading about his work for Assam had always been part of my routine — familiar, comforting, nothing extraordinary. But when he was gone, something inside me broke open. A strange emptiness settled in, as if I had lost someone close, someone woven quietly into my life. And that was the truth. I didn’t understand it at first. Why this depth of sorrow? Why this ache? I found myself searching inward, trying to understand what part of me had been touched so deeply by his loss.
Soon I realized that while I thought I was simply listening to his songs, I was actually hearing pieces of my own story. Three decades of following Zubeen’s music and his work for Assam had woven something deeper. His songs carried the struggles of people like me — people who left home, people who fought their way forward, people who needed hope. Without knowing it, I had been leaning on his voice. Without realizing it, a bond had formed — invisible, unspoken, but real.
Growing up as a village kid in a poor family, I used to listen to Xitore Xemeka Rati by Bhupen Hazarika and feel understood in a way nothing else could offer. That song gave me comfort, a quiet promise that tomorrow might be kinder. Years later, in the USA, when I heard Zubeen’s Pakhi Pakhi Ei Mon, it stirred the same feeling. It carried me back to my childhood — evenings spent studying with a tired mind, my mother’s gentle comfort, my father’s steady discipline. His music painted those memories so clearly that the bond kept growing, quietly, without my noticing.
I grew up through what was perhaps the darkest chapter of modern Assam — 1979 to 1992. First came the Assam Agitation. From 1979 to 1985, our days were a cycle of studying, protesting, marching, and preparing ourselves for whatever sacrifice the movement demanded. Our sense of identity was non‑negotiable, and we paid dearly for it. The administration and the Army came down hard, and we bore the scars. Then came ULFA, and life itself became uncertain. We were trapped between two forces, unable to escape, surrounded by fear and exhaustion. My studies took me out of Assam in 1986, sparing me from part of that storm, but when I returned in 1990, the tension still hung in the air. Between 1992 and 1995, I was mostly outside India for work, visiting home only briefly. During the agitation years, Rabha and Jyoti Sangeet carried our emotions — we truly became the phiringoti rising from the banks of the Luit. Even after I left Assam, my heart stayed behind. I would call home often, long‑distance, the only lifeline before the internet, listening to my parents describe how slowly hope was returning — how Bihu and Puja were finding their rhythm again, and how a young singer named Zubeen was becoming a sensation. I missed the moment he entered Assam’s soul, missed the hope he brought, simply because I was far away in a world without digital connection. But once the internet arrived, I finally understood the phenomenon. His love for his people, his fight for Assamese culture, his ability to guide a generation — I could see it all from afar. And when CAA ignited Assam again, I watched his activism from a distance. It pulled me back into the memories of the darkness I had lived through. I didn’t need to meet him to understand what he stood for. It felt like an old story returning — and with it, the invisible bond grew even stronger.
Zubeen was a larger‑than‑life star, yet to the people around him he was simply one of their own. No distance, no pedestal — just a man who belonged to his people. When I read about his work for flood victims and saw photos of him raising funds, it pulled me back to my school days, when floods swallowed our lives every year. Back then there was no help, no NGOs, no relief — just survival. Watching Zubeen wade into those same waters decades later made me wonder, almost childishly, what it would have meant to have someone like him during those years. It was an impossible dream, but it made the invisible bond feel almost real.
When life took an unexpected turn and everything felt heavy, his songs became a quiet refuge. More Kothai Amoni Korene made me look inward and reminded me I wasn’t alone in my struggles. Hothate Heral Kenino helped me console myself when things felt unbearable. His lyrics were paintings — vivid, tender, true. Runjun Nupure Mate carried the scent of spring in Assam, stirring a forgotten softness. Silaa Silaa Silaa Moi, with its longing and defiance, felt like the anthem of a free mind chasing its dreams at any cost. It reminded me of my own childhood — a poor village kid dreaming of distant horizons, wanting to see the unseen and meet the unknown. And there were so many more songs like these, each one stitching that bond a little tighter.
In Zubeen, I always sensed two people living in one body. In his music, he was a creative force — a genius with a gift that felt almost otherworldly. But in public, he was the opposite: grounded, simple, one of us. He carried himself like a man who belonged to his people, not above them. His confidence and self‑belief struck something deep in me — a reminder that with talent and good intent, anything is possible. That was where our worlds quietly met.
We Assamese are emotional by nature. We wear our love for our culture openly, fiercely. We live for our culture. Zubeen became the fearless torchbearer of that identity. He pushed Assamese culture into the world with unmatched passion, and it resonated with every Assamese soul, no matter their age, gender, or religion. He understood the power he held and used it selflessly, fearlessly, and sometimes in controversial manner, for the good of his people. That is how he built this strange, invisible bond with thousands like us — a bond that needed no meeting, no introduction, only a shared love for the land we came from.
I finally understood that you don’t need to meet someone to feel an unshakable bond. It’s rare, almost impossible — but Zubeen was that rare gift to Assamese society. His selfless love, his work, his voice touched countless lives. What was extraordinary was how he created an invisible connection with thousands of us he never met, never knew. And when that bond was cut short, the tears came naturally. This kind of collective grief is unprecedented. We were blessed to live in his time. Rest in peace, Zubeen.
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