The 19th of September 2025 will probably be remembered as a black day in the history of Assam – a day of intense loss and mourning, but more than that, it will be remembered as a red-letter day that has proved that some people are not just regular people with flesh and bone – they are more than body and even spirit – they beat in the hearts of millions of people, who whine and howl at the bereavement of their beloved, refusing to believe in the fundamental testaments of life and death – “Zubeen cannot die,” so many of them wailed and cried, beating their chests, crowds gathering in hordes and multitudes, like a community mourns the loss of their heartthrob, and that he was, and he is. Zubeen is, and will always be, an emotion – a phenomenon that is beyond the parameters of mortality and otherwise.
I remember playing Rod Aji Keni Pau, sitting depressed in that dilapidated one-room, cloggy, gloomy apartment near JNU, each time I was desperate for a ray of the sun.
Each time I had a heartbreak or a friendship ended, I would play Gun Gun Gun Gun…Kunba duronit asa xun. Each time they played Aane Jua Bate nujua suali joni, I would tell my mother that he probably sang it for someone like me.
While my mother cried inconsolably, like most Assamese who heard the shocking news that came as a bolt from the blue, I fought tears rolling down my own eyes as I was humming his tune a few minutes ago!
I remember reading Rupert Till, who wrote an amazing work: Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music, which talks about the madness in rock and popular concerts and compares the feel to that of spirituality.
While he states the ubiquitousness of music, he says that music in Western societies is a society-based activity; he also talks about alternate states of consciousness, followed by an exclusive discussion about cults. Another dimension that is interesting here is how music and religion influence each other.
Till talks about popular singers and cults created around them – a section of people who are in awe of them and are concerned about them to the point of obsession.
Till writes about a concert at Wembley Stadium dedicated to the then-jailed activist Nelson Mandela. In the line of singers and performers, the first to perform was Sting. The author recounts how 70,000 or more people were singing and reciprocating the energy that was sent out by the singer, and how he experienced goosebumps in an ambience of sheer trance and exhilaration, which is beyond the purview of utterance or even literary description.
He says that had he been in a religious place such as a church or a synagogue, he would have described the same as a religious experience. Zubeen has often claimed to have been inspired by Sting, but knowingly or unknowingly, he became Sting, or even more, for the people of Assam.
Zubeen created a cult and a niche for himself and his songs that have immortalized him, and he has been etched in the memories of at least five generations of the people of Assam.
The passing of Zubeen will and has marked an irreplaceable void in the hearts of the people of Assam, but do people like Zubeen actually die? Would not the tea gardens in Methoni hum the classic Hiya Diya Niya theme? Would not every youngster in Malow Ali or Chandmari or Tezpur or Nazira play Popiya Tora or Mayabini for his beloved? Will not every congregational gathering play Hori Hey, and will not every child remember his mother when they listen to Sesa sesa anguli?
I have never approved of fan culture, but Zubeen was definitely more than any other celebrity. He was loved for his madness, and he never shied away from being himself. He laughed, loathed, protested, supported, stood for, and stood against anything and anyone that he deemed fit.
The rest, he never bothered about. In the world of pretentious celebrities, Zubeen will always remain the mad artist that Assam loved dearly, as his madness had within its confines a simplicity, cushioned comfortably in the innocence of a child – an element that fuels creativity more than anything else in the universe.
While Assam has lost its sunshine and its star, he most certainly has not died.
The author is a columnist, independent researcher and political analyst.