Guwahati: “Endhar ho’bo nuwaron, pohar buli jiyalo (I cannot become darkness when I have lived as light)”.

As millions mourn his death due to drowning on September 19, these words penned by the iconic Assamese singer-composer Zubeen Garg, as if, had come true.

Garg truly had lived in light. Darkness had befallen on his fans and admirers in Assam as the news of his demise reached from faraway Singapore. A cultural icon of Assam, Garg sang in more than 40 dialects and languages – one of them was Hindi, which earned him recognition beyond the northeast region – in a career spanning 33 years.

He was also a celebrated actor, filmmaker and a voice who would not dither from standing up for the causes of Assam and the Northeast. The 52-year-old singer-composer was in Singapore last week to perform at a live concert as part of the Northeast Festival, a platform that promotes the region's culture and music.

There is a lack of clarity regarding what exactly caused Garg to drown. While some initial reports suggested that his death was the result of a scuba diving accident, it later emerged that it could have happened while swimming in an island off Singapore.

His fans and admirers have alleged foul play, blaming the festival organisers and one of Garg's associates, citing a number of video clips from Garg's last moments.

The fact that over 50 FIRs have been filed against them so far in Assam is proof of that cumulative public anger. Even as the state government has asked its CID department to investigate the matter, demands for arrests have only increased, both on social media and on the streets.

Hours before Garg's cremation, a second round of autopsy was conducted primarily on the demand of a section of his fans and admirers.

“Personally, I didn’t endorse the idea of a second post mortem on his body,” Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters at a press conference on September 22.

“But as the chief minister, people’s sentiment hold(s) more weight than my opinion. Hence, we consented to cut open his body and do a second post mortem.” Sarma added.

Garg was cremated on Tuesday (September 23) with state honours, with a 21-gun salute, two days after his body was brought to Guwahati. People lined up on the streets as his mortal remains were wheeled down from the city's Sarusajai stadium towards his resting place in Sonapur, about 30 kms away.

The crowd sang his most popular song, Mayabini. Grieving collectively, they hit the high notes – “Dhumuhar sh’te mor bohu jugore nason (I have been dancing with the tempest for ages)” – at the cremation venue.

Since the news of his death broke out on September 19, lakhs of Garg’s fans and admirers have been gathering across Assam and singing Mayabini, as Garg has once said that it should be sung on the day he passes away.

Earlier, the Assam government had announced three-day state mourning, and allotted 6.2 acres of land at Sonapur for a memorial to be constructed.

For two days, his body was kept at the Sarusajai stadium for people to pay their last tributes. According to the police, more than 15 lakh people came to the stadium.

Larger-than-life persona

That a sea of people had come out of their homes to pay their tribute to Garg is because he did not just touch them with his music, through which they could see fragments of their lives in the songs he penned and sang, but also because of the person he was.

He touched many lives, in many ways. Everyone in Assam has a Zubeen-da story. Garg was all of 19, still a college-goer, when his first Assamese album Anamika was released in 1992. It was an instant chartbuster in Assam. That was the decade that had witnessed Garg’s rise to stardom.

It was also a dark phase for Assam and its people, particularly the youth, marked by economic backwardness, alienation from mainland India and violence caused by the separatist groups. In such a scenario, he was the balm; the rebel that wanted to break-free; that wanted to live, and live on own terms.

Garg’s musical career spread its wings – perhaps best described by his song “Pakhi meli diye mor gane aaji (my songs have spread their wings today).”

Garg sang about love, loss, nature, despair, childhood and social problems – for his music albums and for movies. In 2000, his popularity skyrocketed as he made his debut as an actor and director with the Assamese movie Tumi Mor Matho Mor.

He was all over the state – on the big screens, small screens, on billboards. His songs could be heard playing loudly in markets, buses, college events and social gatherings.

Garg could sing a rock song with the same ease as folk sub-genres like Borgeet or a Bihu. He would do playback tracks for Assamese movies with the same zeal as Vaishnava Naam-Kirtan or Zikir, a Sufi devotional sub-genre unique to Assam.

This versatility broadened his fan base across demographics, generations and communities in Assam.

The enviable swag

Garg was the most sought-after artist during Bihu – the most prominent cultural festival celebrated in Assam to mark the beginning of the agriculture season in mid-April every year. Bihu is Assam's cultural identity that cuts through class, caste, faith and creed.

Throughout the month, Garg would travel extensively across the north-eastern state performing in live concerts, which would be attended by thousands.

What perhaps added to his popularity was also his unique fashion statements and his demeanour that reflected a life lived large. Once he started performing in live shows wearing Scottish kilts, which came as a fashion shocker for many of his fans from villages and small towns, who had never seen any garment like that before.

Garg took it upon himself to thoroughly explain at a live event what a kilt was. That was the end of it. Nobody ever bothered to take note of what we wore as a lower garment until he lost interest in kilts and moved to something else, something new.

Only Garg could wear spectacles that had no glasses or shoes of two different pairs, and pull it off without any fashion scrutiny. By the mid-2000s, when Garg got a break in Bollywood, he was already a big name in the Northeast.

If legendary singer-songwriter Bhupen Hazarika became Assam's pride, Garg became people's emotion. The mass mourning of Garg’s death is also a grim reminder of the funeral of Hazarika in 2011.

In Assam, it is not difficult to find people who would give Garg the status of an icon after Hazarika. Hazarika himself was an admirer of Garg and shared the stage with him on multiple occasions.

Garg never associated himself with any political party but he also never shied away from political activism. His song Politics Nokoriba Bondhu, sung in 2019 against the Union government's imposition of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on Assam and thereby ignoring the Assam Accord of 1985, became the anthem for the anti-CAA protesters of the state in no time.

He had played a significant role too in mobilising the masses against CAA when it was in the Bill stage. Even after the Bill became an Act and operational in Assam, he continued to say, "CAA ami nemanu (We will not accept CAA)"

He also regularly condemned violence by separatist groups in the region, despite receiving threats on a few occasions.

In 2024, he joined Guwahati residents protesting the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government's decision to cut trees in Guwahati to build a new flyover. Garg’s admirers saw him as the person who would never think twice before ruffling feathers.

Rebel with a cause

Rebellion wasn’t new to him though. Born as Zubeen Borthakur, in a Hindu Brahmin family, he was a self-proclaimed atheist who said he rejected religion as well as the caste system. At live events, he often spoke about having given up his “sacred thread” (the ones that Brahmins wear).

His remarks on religion and caste hardly had any adverse impact on his popularity. For many, it made him more loved and accepted across communities. The unconditional love that he had commanded from the public was also because of his generosity.

In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Garg had offered his apartment to the government to use it as an isolation centre. Over decades, people from across Assam have testified to have received financial help from Garg for healthcare, education, marriages, funerals and more.

In an interview to a regional TV channel in 2018, Garg had mentioned that he would make phone calls while travelling between his residence and the studio to ensure that the money had reached the people who had needed it.

Many crying their hearts out for Garg today at his demise come from that section of people in whose lives he had made a difference. Whatever Garg did, he was loved. People laughed and cried with him.

Once at a live programme in Guwahati, Garg was nowhere to be found despite having reached the venue, leaving organisers frantically searching for him. After some time, he emerged from a hideout in a tree nearby, making the audience laugh with his childish gimmick.

Once, while performing at a live event in Guwahati a day after his younger sister had died in a road accident, he broke down several times; the audience stood in silence; allowing him to grieve publicly about his personal loss. They could do that because they saw themselves as the protector and the guardian of their beloved musician.

If you can see fully these aspects of Garg's connection with his fan base, you will get a fair sense of why they are on the streets for four days now – shedding tears, singing his songs.

You will understand why they are seeking accountability from those on whose invitation he had gone to Singapore; who had taken him to an island; and also from his immediate associates, including his manager, who allegedly didn't stop him from jumping into the water even though his doctor back at home had strictly warned him against it because he was epileptic.

The author is a Guwahati-based independent journalist.

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