Goodbye Zubeen Garg, Assam’s Heartbeat; Shine Bright in the Sky

One day Zubeen Garg was in Nagaon, and he took a pinch of khaini (tobacco) from the palm of a rickshaw puller. This happened near a rickshaw stand that was bustling with activity, and a crowd gathered to witness how Zubeen put the tobacco in his mouth. A taxi driver in Guwahati narrated this story to me in 2005. I moved to Guwahati in 2001 and adopted Assam as my second home, and since then, Zubeen’s life-size posters, songs, and stories like the tobacco one from Nagaon entered my world. As a Naga migrant, I learnt Assamese so I could understand the sound, smell, and world around me. Slow to understand but eager to learn, it was the songs from the annual Bihu fever in Assam that unfurled the Assamese world of love and fellowship. The frenzy, nostalgia, and euphoria of Bihu is electric. That is how Zubeen Garg came into my life. As music, as sound, as a star. His voice blasted across the loudspeakers from the multiple Bihu locations in Guwahati, and people said he could do multiple shows on Bihu nights. He was a craze, and the audience waited for him way past midnight to hear him sing. Throughout the 2000s, Zubeen Garg brought an unmatched excitement in the city. It was all about where Zubeen da would perform. And stories about what Zubeen Garg sang, when he arrived, how he danced, as well as the drama that unfurled on the stage stayed on for months, and years. I met him twice – once in his recording studio, and the second time at a local shop called Tholgiri in Uzan Bazaar. I was a fan. And like all fans, I just smiled and was in awe. Zubeen’s home was not Guwahati, he belonged everywhere. He planted his heart in the earth of Assam. 

As multitudes in Assam mourn his death and pour out on the streets, my heart grieves. At Delhi airport, the Chief Minister of Assam Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma went on his knees and paid respect to Zubeen's mortal remains. What happened? The tears, rage, and grief that initially went viral on Assamese local television channels quickly grew into a flood of videos with messages, songs, anger, and tributes for Zubeen Garg. Far away in California, I was glued to the news in Assam, and watched videos of thousands taking to the streets and breaking down. And just like that I turned on my boom box and played 'Mayabini Ratir Bukut'. It brought me closer to Assam, a state that embraced me and gave me wings to fly. I desperately looked for an English translation and when I found it, I slowly understood the rage and the grief. It was the Bihu voice of Zubeen Garg that had welcomed me to Assam a few decades ago. His songs about land, harvest, lust, the moonlit night, and love came from his lifeworld as a khati Oxomiya from Sivasagar and Jorhat. Mayabini Ratir Bukut spoke about love and desires of the heart in metaphors of a flowing river, the rising sun, and sweet dreams. He eloquently rhymed the tenderness of an embrace on a lonely dark night, and his pain on a cloudy night. For a generation who inherited the trauma of militarization and state violence in Assam, Zubeen’s voice offered them solace, and the confidence to fall in love, dream, and rage. No one else could enter the hearts of the young and the rebellious like Zubeen did. Across Assam, his songs revived an imagination of the land, and what to do with the embers of the heart.

I heard about Zubeen Garg mostly from the auto drivers and the taxi drivers. The vegetable vendors and the security guards working in the apartment buildings played his songs and talked about his films. The social and cultural world in Guwahati is a guarded one. The upper caste and upper-class Assamese society networks are watertight. They go to clubs, invite one another in their gated homes, and talk about their holidays in Europe. They don’t care or have the time to share what Assamese culture or tradition mean, least of all to tribal migrants like me in the city. On rare occasions when I heard about Zubeen Garg in the middle-class upper caste Assamese circles, they mocked him.  Some called him pogola, or mad. Zubeen did not belong to their world, and they erased him as they did the world that loved him.  

In my 25 years of associating with Guwahati and Assam, no middle class or upper middle-class Assamese ever referred to Zubeen as an icon. He called out the world of the rich in Assam as shallow, and said his friends were the rickshaw pullers, and those society rejected as mad and crazy. He did not put on the insufferable façade of caste civility to win fans. He did not care.  Really. Zubeen did not give a damn. Far from it, he showed us what it meant to be human. Of course, he knew he was a star. He knew his worth. Once he shared a story from his Bollywood days as a playback singer. One day the well-known Hindi singer Himesh Reshammiya called him up to be a backup singer – specifically to hum, and Zubeen refused. Himesh doubled the money to tempt him. Zubeen turned it down saying he was in Bollywood to sing and not hum. In the years after he returned to Assam, he produced films, and continued his profession as a singer-songwriter. He took part in the CAA citizenship protests and became deeply vocal for environmental rights in Assam. In 2024, he staged a protest when the government of Assam planned to cut down trees in Dighali Pukhuri in Guwahati to build flyovers. “Cut down a tree one by one, then cut me down,” he told the government. 

When I began to work on the politics of food and the struggles of local cooperatives in Assam, I came across his advocacy to promote the regional economy. Zubeen Garg volunteered to become the face of the Sitajakhala milk cooperative in Morigoan district for free. When the audit and accounts department started to create problems, he took a fee of one rupee. This is how much he loved the land. No matter the challenges, he recognized the need to care. For decades, he gave away everything he had to the people of Assam. In his death, we learn how to love one another. Everything we wished we did not say to him we wished we did. Now our aspirations, pain, and melancholy linger in his songs and voice. I wish we could fold time and bring him back to life. But we must push ourselves back to reality and look for the hope he offered to so many around him.  

He predicted that when he died, Assam would shut down for many days and mourn his death. He was sure about that. Zubeen Garg knew how much he was loved. This is not something uncommon. All big stars know their fans adore them. What is extraordinary about Zubeen is the way he reciprocated. He loved with all his heart and gave away all that he had. People say that it was because of his loving wife Garima Saikia Garg that he had a roof over his head. Otherwise, he would have sold his house to pay the bills for the needy. Zubeen connected with the people and land called Assam in an incredible way. He saw his fans – an inter-generational crowd all over Assam who resonated with him. They stayed up late to hear his Bihu songs and showered him with affection that was unfiltered and riotous. His concert venues ranged from the pothars (paddy fields) of rural Assam, to the soccer fields of Guwahati, and the grand stages everywhere. But he was most alive performing in his beloved homeland. A Zubeen concert in Assam was flashy with lights, excited dancing crowds, and a stream of howling with echoes of “Zubeen da!” through the air.  

He cried, raged, laughed, and fought with organizers on the stage. He lived life without pretense as the king of hearts. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of videos about Zubeen, and in every single one of them he utters what he feels, and what he believes. He is unfurling his life and his suffering. He admitted in many interviews how he was fond of drinking, and he was trying to drink less and care for his health. He told us his struggles and secrets on television interviews and kept things open. Yet, his fans never abandoned him. They loved him more. It allowed them to feel their own sorrows and recovery journeys as well. In his moments of vulnerability, Zubeen reminded us there is nothing to gain from covering the truth about life. 

He announced his love for his fans on the stage and off the stage. Yes, many other stars do that too. But their lives are well choreographed. They curate their truths and rehearse their answers. Like the Brahmaputra River that flows through his beloved Assam, Zubeen’s life and love were untamed and spilled over leaving testament of his generosity and tenderness. Now that he is gone, the void he leaves behind sounds like thousands of hearts breaking apart.  

He walked around Guwahati, recorded his songs in the city, ate and drank at the pubs and restaurants, and cared for the world around him. The auto drivers in Uzan Bazaar would tell me stories about the families and children Zubeen supported. He paid school fees for children, and covered bills for hundreds of patients from the poorest of the poor families. One day, a new gym called Iron Man Gym opened in Joypur, near Kharguli hills. It became the talk of the locality. We learnt that it was Zubeen’s initiative to open the gym for the youth in the area. “Many struggle with addiction here, so Zubeen da wants them to take care of their health,” the autorickshaw drivers and shopkeepers reasoned. There are thousands of testimonies and stories about Zubeen’s generosity and love, and they will continue to pour in. His life showed us that there is no limit to love and how much we can share and care for one another. 

Truth be told, not every star feels that way. Stars are self-obsessed. That is why Zubeen was an icon of hope in the sea of hopelessness and misery. In the last few decades, growing inequality and poverty has divided Assam. This is true of its neighboring states like Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Meghalaya. The rich have become richer, and they have packaged everything for sale. Mountains, rivers, forests, and valleys are all resources for sale to corporations and industries. These projects have never been about improving the lives of the poor. Hundreds of state-sponsored festivals have come up across Northeast India to promote culture and tourism. Only the VIPs are visible on the stage. This optic speaks for itself. These events define culture and heritage through the lens of commodity and markets. One must have an idea to sell and make profit. The poor across Assam contribute to the workforce and the economy, but they don’t matter in the larger calculations of the festival organisers. In an audio interview recording, Shyamkanu Mahanta, the organizer of the Northeast Festival in Singapore, was heard explaining that he was in a business meeting when he learnt about Zubeen’s accident. After all, the Northeast India festival was all about business ultimately. He was being candid, but his admission was jarring, and for the working class that loved Zubeen, unforgivable. 

Today, politicians, festival organizers, and event management teams curate the taste, smell, and touch of Northeast India. In Zubeen’s death, he exposed how poorly they understand the heartbeat and soul of Assam, and Northeast India. These festivals sell a regional identity and culture with a price tag, without dignity. It is bereft of life and love. They sacrified Zubeen Garg at the alter of a circus called Northeast Festival. A meaningless exercise to make the rich only richer. The language of the people pouring out across Assam and mourning is clear. There is no price tag for Assam, its land, and rivers. Zubeen would not have wanted this to happen. The voices and lives of the poor that cultural festivals erase, have come alive. The voices that sang along with Zubeen, the bodies that danced to his music, and the hearts that loved him unconditionally have come alive. Zubeen’s legacy lives in them. He has returned home to his beautiful land to rest. He ashes will be immersed in the Brahmaputra River. Back to the country that gave him life and love. Under the canopy of the Assamese skies, Zubeen lives. His dreams and visions will take roots here. We must ask ourselves; how do we love Assam like Zubeen?  

Joi Ai Axom. 

Dolly Kikon is a professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She can be reached at dollykikon@gmail.com

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