Zubeen Garg: Assam’s first true rockstar

This article was originally published in Mint Lounge in October 2025. Below is a longer version. 

Zubeen Garg sang thousands of songs but his legacy extended far beyond the music he made. Answering to absolutely no one, Garg’s irreverence gave him god-like status in a community starved of icons.

One February night in 2023, Zubeen Garg stood before a crowd of thousands and declared that he would not sing.

“Some days you feel like singing. On others, you don’t,” Garg said in his signature drawl. “Today I don’t.”

The crowd in the eastern Assam town of Sivasagar erupted in protest.  Fans had come from near and far, waiting for hours in the cold only to watch him perform.

But Garg had already walked off the stage and driven off into the night. 

For a few days, the episode — one among a long line of Garg’s antics on stage, including sleeping-and-singing, drinking while singing, climbing up an electric pole mid-performance — drew ire. Some locals threatened to not allow him back into Sivasagar. 

But less than two months later, Garg was back in town like nothing happened.  He performed at Sivasagar’s annual Bihu event like he always did: he sang, the crowd sang along, he probably threw in a slang, and the crowd swooned.

All had been forgiven and forgotten as it always was with Garg: he was, after all, Assam’s first true rockstar, a mercurial maverick who had burst into the conservative Assamese music scene of the early nineties out of nowhere, his uniquely-gifted voice and tender lyrics turning him into a sensation overnight when he was barely out of his teens. 

In the years that followed, Garg went on to record some 40,000 songs in multiple languages. However, his legacy extended far beyond the music he made. 

He once stormed off stage when his hosts interrupted him for singing a Hindi song during a Bihu function, an act full of audacity in a state acutely sensitive about language. And he was an equal opportunity offender: he refused to sing for big Bollywood directors simply because he didn’t like the “way the song sounded”. 

Moi ghenta khatir nokoru (I don’t give a damn), Garg said, time and again. 

Answering to absolutely no one, Garg’s irreverence over the years catapulted him to a god-like status for a community starved of icons. 

For the better part of the last decade, he lived in a house on a hill, surrounded by trees and birds and the Brahmaputra. He shared meals with auto-rickshaw drivers; kept his home open for the gaggle of fans, who would invariably congregate at his gate every morning; and handed out cash to anyone who asked for it. 

Last week, after the 52-year-old suddenly died by drowning in Singapore, the state was stunned into mourning: shops shuttered, memorials appeared every few metres, men in uniform broke down on duty as Garg’s body came back home, and lakhs gathered to pay their last respects, singing his songs.

THE ECHO OF THEIR AGE

In 1992, just after the government launched one of its biggest military offences against the insurgent group United Liberation Front of Asom, Garg’s first album, Anamika, hit the stands.  

That October, cassettes flew off the shelf, loud speakers blasting his songs at highway dhabas where long journey buses would pitstop in the middle of the night.

Nobody knew of the college dropout who, in a moment of frustration, tore up his exam papers and decided to pursue music. But Garg’s songs — which he sang, composed and wrote himself — became instant hits: relatable and fresh, an unmistakable rock influence in several like Anamika and Gaane Ki Aane.

“We were into Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan,” says Mukul Baishya, a 53-year-old IT professional based in Jorhat, “But suddenly, those [western] sounds came home. I remember thinking to myself, wow, Assamese music can also sound like this.”

In quick succession, Garg released album after album — Aaxa, Maya, Xobdo Rong, Mukti, Pakhi. The songs spoke of love and longing, ambition and disillusionment, violence and grief: salve to a generation born into the chaos of the Assam Agitation of 1979-85 against outsiders, and then violently thrust into an all-devouring bloody insurgency of the 1990s. Hope, aspiration, and dreams all stood in suspension , as the Indian state cracked down with counterinsurgency operations. 

“People had stopped dreaming or feeling,” says Guwahati-based historian Ankur Tamuli Phukan, “But Garg’s songs showed that desire could be explored and expressed. They were statements of personal freedom — something people had stopped believing they had.”

Over time, Garg’s political voice grew sharper.  “We have become machines,” he sang in Jontro, a searing critique of capitalism. In Xunere Xojua (Built with gold), grieving for a world lost to violence and insurgency, he asked “Who will rebuild our golden home?”

Many were perhaps shaped by early influences: Ily Borthakur, his singer mother who instilled in him, in his own words, “madness for music”, and Mohini Mohan (Kapil) Borthakur, his magistrate father, in whose large library he read everything from O’ Henry to Nietzsche. He had two younger sisters—one of them, Jonkie, also a singer, whom he lost to an accident in 2002. The other sister, Palmee Borthakur, is a professor.

Courtesy of  the father’s transferable job, the family moved across Assam— from Tura (now in Meghalaya) where he was born, to Tamulpur to Karimganj to Tezpur to Bijni. But it was the tea town of Jorhat, where Garg spent his teens, which would shape him and his music. Old timers remember him as a reserved boy, buried in books, often found humming in the backbenches of the classroom. A pair of Gandhi-style spectacles framing his face under the mop of unruly curls, Garg would be seen cycling around town, his keyboard in tow. On the days it rained, he would don a large Assamese jaapi—a conical hat—and gumboots. 

Baishya, a college batchmate, recalls Garg’s dream of bringing a “new wave” of music to Assam. “Like many in our generation, he carried ’90s angst—but he channeled it into music,” he says.

Years later, long after he became a household name and branched into films, Garg played one of the four leads (and also gave music) in the cult Assamese hit Mon Jai (The Heart Desires) — a film about four young men lost in the hopelessness of 1990s’ Assam. His character, Manab, embodied the angst, desire, and despair of the unemployed, angry, borderline-alcoholic Assamese young man of the decade — a role he played to perfection, no doubt the reflection of a time he knew only too well.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF MOURNING

Garg forayed into cinema at the turn of the millennium. In 2000, Garg composed the music for blockbuster Hiya Diya Niya, directed by Assamese cinema’s hit machine Munin Barua. Barua got Garg on the insistence of his son, Maanash (Rijjoo) Barua, who was a big fan.  The two quickly became close. 

“His genius was something else,”  says Maanash of his friend. There were times he would record 22 songs in seven hours flat.  It took just 15 minutes to compose the title track of Hiya Diya Niya, a smash hit which continues to be popular even today. 

“We’d be drinking together, and suddenly, in the middle of the night, he would get a creative spark,” Maanash says. In 2001, on one such night, Garg scribbled fresh lyrics onto the foil of a cigarette pack and handed it to Maanash. His father was working on a new film, Daag, and the song was meant for it.

A few days later, when Garg asked for the lyrics, Maanash realised—horrified—that he had left the pants in the laundry, foil and all. The lyrics were gone.

Though likely irritated, Garg didn’t show it, he recalls. He poured himself a few more whiskys, went into the studio, and emerged hours later with the song: Mayabini Ratir Bukut (In the embrace of an ethereal night).

In the weeks following his death, Mayabini became the  soundtrack of the mourning. When he was cremated with full state honours on the outskirts of Guwahati, the thousands-strong crowd broke into the song, his burning pyre in the backdrop.

ACROSS DIVIDES

Over the years, Garg’s repertoire expanded. The romantic ballads remained a mainstay but he churned folk tunes, devotional songs and Bihu-tuned songs, all bearing his signature. 

The diversity allowed him to connect with listeners across generations.

For fans like 62-year-old, Akon Devi, Garg’s borgeets (devotional songs by 16th century poet-saint Srimanta Sankardeva) were how she started her day. Others, like 40-year-old Manoj Deka, resonated with the candid lyrics. “Romance wasn’t abstract anymore. He told it like it is: a man longing for a woman, a man heartbroken,” he says. And for people in their twenties, like Sadhan Chetry, it was Garg’s entire persona—the flamboyant shirts, cowboy hats, and the smattering of English lyrics—that pulled them in. “He had chaal (style),” he says.

But more than just age, Garg transcended ethnic and linguistic divides that Assam has been long cleaved along. He sang in Bengali and over 30 other languages and dialects. In interviews, he would even claim to be “half Bengali”— he spent his childhood in Bengali-dominated Karimganj on the border of Bangladesh — again a somewhat bold position for an Assamese artiste, given the region’s fraught identity politics.

Garg once bared his stomach on stage to show that he had renounced the sacred thread traditionally worn by Brahmins. “Mur kunu jaati nai, mur kunu dharma nai, mur kunu bhagwan nai,” he said. “I have no caste, no religion, no god.”

These declarations resonated with many communities in Assam who have historically been excluded from the mainstream Assamese identity. 

For fans like Mirza Lutfar Rehman, belonging to the Bengali Muslim community, often derided as “outsiders” in Assam, Garg’s music made him feel heard and seen. “Time and again, we have been told we are not Assamese enough but the fact that we loved and listened to his songs made us feel Assamese,” he says.

THE LOCAL LEGEND

Garg’s body was kept for two days in a stadium in Guwahati. Women bent double hobbled to the stage. Young men wept uncontrollably; some shouted at the coffin in rage begging him to wake up. “Oi Zubeen da, kot goli aamak eri thoi?” cried one man in the crowd. Where have you gone, Zubeen da, leaving us behind like this?

What gave a singer this kind of sway over people?

Over the years, Garg lived in more than three different homes in Guwahati, and wherever he went, the locality quickly became intertwined with his identity. In suburban Kahilipara, he lived with his wife, Garima Saikia Garg—whom he married in 2001—on the top two floors of a building at a busy tri-junction. Over time, locals began calling the area “Zubeen Chowk”. Garg would take a walk around the neighbourhood, in his red ‘killer’ vest, always an entourage in tow. “There is a joke amongst us that everyone in the area owns something that once belonged to Zubeen da,” says Rahul Ali, who sells chicken, metres away from Garg’s home. He once watched from a distance as Garg took off his cap and placed it on a bystander’s head after the man complimented it. “Or he would just walk in to our shops, and ask ‘sob thik ase ne?’ (Is all well?),” says Ali.

In his home-cum-studio atop a hill adjacent to the Brahmaputra in Kharguli—now under renovation—fans would gather every single morning: a mix of struggling artists, wide-eyed fans, and many simply seeking help. 

For many he was the answer to the difficult circumstance. Run over in an accident? Zubeen da. Can’t fund your daughter’s wedding? Zubeen da. Want to study further? Zubeen da.

Sanjay Barbora, Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, and a neighbour of Garg’s in Guwahati, described him as “an odd mix of a star and the local boy everyone knew and loved.”

In 2019, Garg opened the ‘Iron Man Gym’ in Kharguli—a space meant for local youth, who had a weakness for the bottle (he had one himself). With a modest monthly fee of just ₹500, it became a hub for young people  from the area. Many registered — sometimes travelling across the city — just hoping for a chance to see him in person.

Rini Barman, a PhD student of anthropology at John Hopkins University, US, described Garg’s all-consuming popularity as “a kind of kinship”. “It evolved over the years—through awe, respect, wonder, even scandal. In more ways than one, Garg came to represent the little hopes and quiet heartbreaks of everyday life,” she says.

But Garg was no crowd-pleasing altruist. He was often sharply political and never shied away from taking a stand be it against the Centre’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act or tree felling for a flyover construction.

He publicly called out corrupt politicians, and described himself as a “socialist”. Once asked to comment on the Centre granting “classical language” status to Assamese, he snapped back: “Who are they to give us any recognition? We have given them tea, rhino and oil. Who the hell are they?”

It was not just posturing for the cameras, extending to his private life as well.

Sadhan Nath, the caretaker of Garg’s Kharguli home, saw it up close.

Garg got the renovation plan for his house redone three times just to avoid cutting any trees, Nath recalls. The house, still under construction, now features a half-built staircase that winds around a large bel tree. “The stories are countless,” Nath says, at Garg’s under construction home, a day after he was cremated. “He once sponsored a momo stall for a young man in the area just like that. No one left empty-handed,” he says.

Nath, a carpenter, first met Garg in the mid-2000s on a job. Garg hired him full-time to take care of his home and studio. For Nath, who had once been just a fan—breaking police barricades to catch a glimpse of Garg at concerts—it felt surreal. Years later, he would stand on the other side of those barricades, watching young boys do what he once did.

Every Bihu, Nath, despite chores, would make an effort to catch at least one of Garg’s performances in the city. If he ever missed it, his boss always noticed. “How come I didn’t see you this time?” Garg would ask.

A KING & HIS KINGDOM

Outside Assam, many today may remember Garg as the voice behind the 2006 hit number Ya Ali from the film Gangster. 

While that song did mark his breakthrough into Bollywood — followed by over a hundred more — he ultimately chose to return to Assam, to sing for what he called his “own people”.  

“A king never leaves his kingdom,” he once remarked.

In any case, Assam remained a fixture in his Mumbai life too: his home was a haven for several fellow musicians from Assam, trying to make it in Bollywood. 

Like it did for singer Joi Barua, in the summer of 2003. The two had met the previous summer in Guwahati, when Barua was a college student. Later, when he wanted to follow his dreams in Mumbai, he reached out to Garg, who simply said, “Just come.”

For six months, Barua stayed with Garg, who introduced him to studio life, to the rhythms of recording. “Joi, toi nokoribi bhoi, tur logot asu moi” (Fear not brother, I am with you), Garg would often tell Barua, now a well-established playback singer in the industry.

Much of what made Garg the phenomenon he was stemmed from quiet, private encounters like these — making him so intimately loved in Assam that his death triggered a mourning so spontaneous and vast, it felt almost surreal. 

At the stadium, where his body was kept, a fan broke down, pointed at his heart, and said: “He can never leave, he will always be here.”