On September 19, 2025, while at my University, I received the news of Zubeen Garg's demise. For a moment, I could not believe it. My world stopped, time seemed suspended.
His songs had always been intimate to me, and they touched my soul, comforted me, and made me feel at ease.
And suddenly, he was gone. Assam entered a state of mourning, yet his voice echoed everywhere, in tears and remembrance. It was during this time of grief that I stumbled upon his last podcast, an interview conducted by Rita Choudhury Baideo.
Having read her works, such as Deo Langkhui, Makam, and Mayabritta, which explore Assamese history, society, and marginalised identities, I was deeply struck by how this conversation with Zubeen was unlike any other. It was intimate, probing, philosophical, and, in retrospect, prophetic.
The podcast had taken place just before Zubeen left for Singapore for the Assam Music Festival. Rita Baideo began by saying that Zubeen required "no introduction."
She opened with the song Jiya Re, played it to him, and he smiled, recalling that it was shot in Panvel. He spoke of the place, mentioning that it was also associated with the legendary band Queen and singer Freddie Mercury (Farrokh Bulsara), who, ironically, never embraced his Indian identity. That memory opened the door to a cascade of recollections.
Songs, Stories, and Symbols
When Rita Baideo reminisced about her younger days listening to Jiya Re, Zubeen himself recalled another song named Kafur (Camphor). It was written for him by a girl named Ritu for the album Pakeeza. "Hua tera dil kafur jese hua mera dil kafur re…" She had chosen camphor because love sublimates; it melts away like camphor. Zubeen admitted he had made countless songs, but never once had he thought of camphor, a uniqueness that mesmerized him.
It revealed his eternal thirst for the new, for metaphor, for strangeness. Their conversation then turned to the mid-1990s. Rita Baideo recalled seeing a gypsy car parked daily in front of her MLA hostel quarters in 1995, always playing Zubeen's Maya. At that moment, Zubeen shared his own story of owning his first gypsy, recalling its number 9590.
He laughed as he admitted that he never played his own songs in the car, and by the time they were released, he had already listened to them a hundred times during the making. Instead, he preferred listening to Sting, Pink Floyd, and these artists whose music spoke of alienation, modern society, trauma, existentialism, war, and the crisis of meaning. This generational bridge was important.
Rita Baideo admitted that for her generation, it was hard to connect to modern singers, but Zubeen's songs carried her away. She recalled listening to Jiya Re on her way to Gomukh, a song that seemed to accompany her pilgrimage. She also spoke of her novel Ei Xomoi Xei Xomoi, where she wrote that people were no longer attracted to Borgeet or Lokageet.
It was Zubeen who changed that, she said. He carried the youth along, gave them a new wave, and his songs became cross-generational. Zubeen responded, recalling the years 1996-97, when Hindi film music was dominant in Assam.
When asked who made him a machine, he replied: "The people." This was not bitterness but truth. The love of people had turned into a relentless demand. He spoke of mortality: "When a fighter dies in war, only three or four stand near." Ironically, his death brought lakhs to the streets, and Assam itself stood still for seven days, exactly as he had once prophesied.
The fighter did not die alone, and he died embraced by his kingdom. Zubeen called himself a self-made man. Though he owned five houses, he confessed he had no home, often sleeping in his studio. "Almost all people are alone," he said, even telling Rita Baideo, "you are alone too." Fame, he implied, amplifies solitude rather than cures it. His words echoed existential sociology and Marx's theory of alienation, that even in crowds, modern individuals remain estranged.
On religion, Zubeen told himself agnostic. He believed more in mind and heart, in love and human values, than in rituals. He spoke of Nietzsche's "Nothingness," not as despair but recognition of impermanence.
His philosophical leanings resonated with existentialism, with Buddhism, with rebellion against dogma. When Rita Baideo asked about his core, Zubeen redirected, evading. He identified instead with Che Guevara, the eternal rebel.
Metaphorically, this was Zubeen's truth as he could never be boxed into labels, structures, or rituals. Like Che, he was restless, elusive, uncontainable.
The Waves and the End
Toward the end of the interview, Zubeen spoke of his film Roi Roi Binale, a project he called his darkest. Its character, a blind man, often asked: "How big is the ocean? How far?" Zubeen compared himself not to a river but to the sea. "The sea is a dead end for me. I am just swimming. I have not even reached the ship," he said. Rita Baideo replied: "Hope you find the ship, the lighthouse." Zubeen answered with imagery of waves: "I will play with the waves."
Onscreen, he had once done so. In real life, shortly before his passing in Singapore, he was again with the waves. This coincidence is more than chance. His life was like a river, restless, flowing, always rebelling. And finally, the river returned to the sea, where all rivers dissolve.
His play with the waves was acceptance of uncertainty, impermanence, and fate. He also insisted: "A king should never leave his kingdom." He wanted to die in Assam, submerged in the Brahmaputra. And in truth, even though he left this world elsewhere, Assam itself was submerged in grief, halting life for seven days. The prophecy fulfilled itself. Zubeen Garg was not only a singer.
He was a philosopher in disguise, an existentialist without books, a cultural guardian without a crown. He gave Assam his body, his voice, his rebellion, his exhaustion, and his prophecy. He called himself a fighter who would die alone, but Assam proved him wrong. He was carried like a fallen king, his people surrounding him in lakhs.
For me, as a '90s kid, Zubeen was always there in joy, in sorrow, in travel, in leisure. His humming, his voice, his rebellion, rescued us again and again.
Now, even in his silence, he sings louder than ever. The conversation with Rita Choudhury Baideo reads less like an interview and more like a farewell note from fate.
It was Zubeen laying bare fragments of himself, the rebel, the traveller, the king, the exhausted machine, the playful wave-dancer, and without ever fully showing his core. Perhaps that was the essence of Zubeen Garg: he could never be pinned down, because he was not just a man. He was and will remain the voice of Assam.
The author is Assistant Professor, Assam Royal Global University
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