Rita Mukand
On the afternoon of September 19, Assam was plunged into grief. News broke that Zubeen Garg- the iconic singer, composer, actor, and humanitarian had died suddenly by drowning. At 3 p.m., a memorial was held.
Looking at the sea of stunned pale faces, the sorrow was contagious, and we were soon all in tears. Later, one Assamese girl voiced how sad they were and said, "Everyone is going through the same feeling; we never actually thought it would affect us that much."
The levels of distress were unprecedented; people who had never heard of Zubeen Garg before his death were awakened to a new, captivating person they wished they had met.
The state of Assam, with a population of 30 million, shut down almost spontaneously. Over one million of Zubeen Garg's grievers gathered in Guwahati, crowds so thick that it entered the Limca Book of Records as the fourth-largest funeral gathering in the world, to the numbers of Michael Jackson's funeral, the rest of India got to hear about him for the first time, and news about him travelled all the way to the New York Times, who wrote an article about him and journalist Ravish Kumar, who heard about him for the first time, couldn't stop talking about him.
Zubeen never fitted neatly into societal boxes. Though born into a Hindu Brahmin family, he openly declared himself free of caste or religious identity. He faced criticism for his views, but never stopped being honest, defiant, and true to his own voice.
Coming from a well-to-do family, his father, Mohini Mohon Borthakur, was a Magistrate, a lyricist and poet under the pen name Kapil Thakur, and his mother, Ialy Borthakur, was a singer. His sister Jonkie Borthakur was a singer and actress who, at 18 years old, died in a car accident in February 2002. Her loss deeply scarred him.
Zubeen Garg married fashion designer Garima Saikia on 4 February 2002.
While Zubeen Garg was a musician, a lyricist, and a filmmaker, his aura transcended to connect to a realm no person could easily touch. He touched the core of humanity as the soul and conscience of the people. Since he left this world on 19 September, Assam has not slept peacefully.
After his passing, the Assamese express that they feel an empty darkness around them, as if no one could take his place or replace his aura in a hundred years.
Dolly Kikon writes in her article Goodbye Zubeen Garg, Assam’s Heartbeat; Shine Bright in the Sky, '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.
Garima Siakia Garg is offering Gomcha on the coffin of her husband
"The upper caste and upper-class Assamese society networks are watertight. They go to clubs, invite one another to 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 means, least of all to tribal migrants like me in the city. On rare occasions when I heard about Zubeen Garg in the middle-class and upper caste Assamese circles, they mocked him. Some called him pogola, or madman.
Zubeen did not belong to their world, and they erased him as they did the world that loved him."
She also wrote: "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. In 2024, he staged a protest over the government's plans to cut trees in Dighali Pukhuri in Guwahati to build flyovers.
“Cut down a tree one by one, then cut me down,” he told the government."
#WATCH | Singer Zubeen Garg's death | Guwahati: At his residence, Assamese author Anuradha Sharma Pujari says, "I am fond of Zubeen Garg's music and his talent. He was a unique person with a golden heart. Besides being a musician and a singer, he always carried a golden… pic.twitter.com/X1yLpxoomY
— ANI (@ANI) September 20, 2025
Himashri Mohanta, a young Assamese teacher, says, "We called him 'Luitkontho,' the voice of the Brahmaputra. Even after reaching global recognition, he remained the same. For us in Assam, his presence felt like family: elders saw him as a son, youngsters as a brother or leader, and he was always a spirited member of each group of youngsters, and every home knew his songs."
Talukar, an Assamese shop owner who just returned from Zubeen's funeral in Sonapur, lamented his loss and said heavily, "Where will you get a person like him in this world? For five days, my children and wife have been crying endlessly. People have gone mad with grief. They are standing in the rain and the heat just to see him for the last time."
The news about him reached America and The New York Times wrote about him, "Zubeen Garg, the singer, composer, producer and multiple-instrumentalist who became a household name in India with the Bollywood hit “Ya Ali…” died on Friday in Singapore" The New York Times also wrote: In 2024, he received an honorary degree from the University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya, in recognition of his musical contributions, according to a news release."
Mourners touching the carriage with Zubeen Garg's body
Dr. Sib Sankar Majumder, Associate Professor, Dept. of English, Assam University, author of the book Native Foreigners, said, "His lyrics held universal truths that transcended cultures and connected hearts. He had a gift of uniting people from all walks of life, languages, and religions, and his religion was humanity...He was so simple, and we are all still so shocked at his passing. I was very connected to his music."
There may be singers with sounder voices, or songs with better technical perfection, but Zubeen's songs touched raw nerves, opened hearts, and surgically removed the dross, leaving one unfiltered and deeply human. Through melody, he stitched together the brokenness of a region of over 30 million people, ripped by decades of insurgency, state violence, neglect, and underreporting.
Zubeen's songs were cathartic and therapeutic. No one connected with the hearts of the restless youth quite like Zubeen. Across Assam, his songs reignited a sense of belonging, identity, and imagination to revive Assam from the ashes of the past, his words flowing like the Brahmaputra River running its eternal course to give and not to take.
Dr Mitali Goswami, HOD Department of English, author of short stories and a poet, summed it perfectly when she said: "What Zubeen meant to me is an enigma even to myself. I did not know that his youthful and soulful voice, his philosophy of one world, his all-encompassing love for man and nature alike, his compassion for the vulnerable would be so deeply rooted in my system that at his passing, I would mourn him as my own and would feel the loss of a son, a friend, a philosopher, and a guide. Every home in Assam has lost a comrade and a helping hand.
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“Even in his death, he has united the North East as never before. This sea of humanity that poured out into the streets was not Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian. They were not male or female, rich or poor, or just lovers of music. They were lovers of a soul that descends to earth but rarely, like a benevolence."
