Remembering Our Beloved Zubeen Da
There are some deaths that leave behind grief. And then there are deaths that seem to alter the sound of an entire land.
September 19, 2025, was such a day for Assam. When the news of Zubeen Garg’s death in Singapore reached home, disbelief travelled faster than grief. People stared at their phones, called one another, and waited for someone to say that it was not true. Surely, Zubeen da could not simply be gone. A man whose voice had occupied so much of our lives could not suddenly disappear from them.
But he had.
One year has passed since that terrible day. Yet, in Assam, the calendar seems to have moved faster than the heart.
His voice remains everywhere. It rises from cars caught in traffic, drifts out of roadside tea stalls, fills wedding halls and Bihu stages, travels through headphones on lonely journeys and finds its way into homes at dusk. His songs have survived the person who sang them. And perhaps that is what makes his absence so painful. We can still hear him. We simply cannot see him.
Sometimes, while a Zubeen song is playing, there is an almost instinctive feeling that he is still somewhere nearby. One imagines him walking onto a stage, guitar in hand, hair untamed, smiling that familiar, almost mischievous smile before beginning to sing. Then reality returns.
The song continues.
He does not.
For an entire generation, Zubeen Garg was never merely a singer. He was part of growing up. His songs accompanied our first friendships, first romances, college years, celebrations, heartbreaks and journeys home. He sang during Bihu, at weddings, in concert halls and in moments when nobody else was listening. His music entered people’s lives so quietly that many did not realise how deeply it had settled there.
That is why remembering Zubeen da is also remembering ourselves.
A particular song can suddenly transport someone back twenty years. A melody can bring back a classroom, a rainy evening, a long bus journey, a forgotten friendship or a person who is no longer in one’s life. His music became a kind of emotional memory bank for Assam. When we listen to him today, we do not merely hear a singer. We hear earlier versions of ourselves.
Born in Tura in 1972, Zubeen began his professional journey with Anamika in 1992. What followed was an extraordinary musical life spanning decades, languages and artistic forms. He became a singer, composer, lyricist, actor and filmmaker, while his voice travelled far beyond Assam. His rendition of Ya Ali brought him immense national recognition, but fame elsewhere never diminished his profound artistic relationship with Assam.
Songs such as Mayabini and Tumi Xubax became more than popular compositions. They became part of the emotional vocabulary of Assamese society.
But perhaps numbers, awards and accomplishments can never fully explain why people loved him so deeply.
It was because Zubeen da never appeared distant.
He seemed like one of us.
He was fiercely independent, outspoken, imperfect, emotional and unapologetically himself. He could be unpredictable, but there was something deeply human about that unpredictability. He did not seem interested in constructing a carefully polished celebrity persona. He simply remained Zubeen.
And perhaps that is why his voice carried such truth.
He also used his fame to reach people beyond the stage, extending support during crises and encouraging young artists. Often, the gestures that mattered most were not accompanied by publicity. They simply happened.
One year after his death, there is still a strange contradiction in Assam. We have learned to live with his absence, but we have not learned to accept it.
Perhaps we never will.
And perhaps we should not.
Because some people are not meant to become memories in the ordinary sense. They become part of a place’s collective consciousness. Their presence survives not in photographs or statues alone, but in the way people speak, sing, celebrate and remember.
Zubeen da has become such a presence.
A child born after his death can hear his voice today and fall in love with a song. A young musician can discover his music and find courage in it. A mother can hear an old melody and remember her youth. A father can hear a familiar song and remember the days when his children were still small.
That is the strange immortality of an artiste.
The body disappears.
The voice remains.
A year ago, Assam lost Zubeen Garg.
But Assam did not lose Zubeen da.
He lives in our festivals, our memories, our journeys, our celebrations and our silences. He lives whenever an old song suddenly makes someone smile through tears. He lives whenever a guitar begins to play and an entire gathering instinctively joins the voice.
Perhaps that is why, one year later, we still speak of him in the present tense.
Because whenever Assam sings, Zubeen da is still here.
Siddharth Roy
Guwahati, Assam