It’s been nearly a month since Zubeen Garg breathed his last. His fans continue to demand justice to avenge what they call an “untimely” death on foreign soil. Much has been written about the loss to the artistic world — and especially to the people of Assam, for whom he remains a legend. Anyone who has followed Zubeen’s career knows his propensity to give a damn about his celebrity status. He spoke his mind and didn’t care who he offended, because his words were often laced with sarcasm towards the political class and the elite. He was a self-professed “social leftist”.
What has been left unspoken is the burden of wearing the crown of a celebrity. Zubeen — who could send people into raptures with just the opening lines of his much-loved Mayabini — was, at the end of the day, only human, prone to the highs and lows of the world in which he lived. It’s a surreal world — one where artistes are never sure whether they will receive the same adulation once they can no longer perform. Those managing their lives and finances are often the most extractive, profiting from every show, their brief seemingly limited to ensuring that the artiste keeps performing.
For someone as sensitive and emotional as Zubeen, travelling from one end of the country to another — and often overseas — meant a whirlwind life with hardly a moment to ponder over life, love, and longing. What he couldn’t express in words flowed out as melody and verse. Every now and then, the quintessential Zubeen would speak his mind in incisive interviews, such as the one where he said, “A king never leaves his kingdom,” referring to his flat in Mumbai, left forlorn because Assam was his hearth and home — the only place where his restless soul could find solace, until the next performance and the one after that.
Listening to Zubeen sing, one senses an undefined pathos in his songs. It’s almost as if he were grieving. He also seemed to have a premonition about death. Perhaps the loss of his sister in a freak accident was something he could never reconcile with. Those of us who have lost loved ones know the mental and emotional toll such losses inflict. But does someone like Zubeen even have the time to complain about such an immense burden?
Those around him expected him to deliver, no matter what. Yet it was evident to anyone who watched Zubeen perform regularly that he never needed to make an effort to sync with the crowd. They roared with ecstasy as he plucked the strings of his guitar or as his fingers glided over the keyboard. And the moment he sang the first line of a song, the crowd went into a frenzy. It’s hard to recall any singer-songwriter from the Northeast — or indeed the entire country — with such a powerful persona who could so effortlessly entertain despite obvious signs of fatigue.
To be an artiste performing for massive crowds, night after night, also means living on a perpetual high — or at least having to appear so. But fatigue is cumulative — the result of late nights, lost rest, the draining routine of constant travel, and the gnawing fear that if you don’t perform on a given date, someone younger and more versatile will replace you. All artistes are bedevilled by this thought — of being asked to move over, of no longer being wanted. Yet it’s not as if Zubeen actively sought adulation. When he spoke, it was always to tell some harsh truth. He was consistently vocal against Hindi imposition. He stated openly that for the people of the Northeast, English was the link language, and Assamese was a rich and beautiful tongue — as old as Hindi, if not older — and that he was proud to speak it. No singer before him had been as political as Zubeen. To publicly declare himself a “social leftist” and an admirer of Che Guevara, at a time when the rulers of this country profess a right-wing agenda, required courage of conviction — something few possess today.
The son of Assam, who also felt the pain of the underdogs in the state’s divided polity — those labelled immigrants and bulldozed out of their hearths and homes — was, in death, able to unite everyone in grief. Zubeen also denounced the caste system and called himself a secularist with a heart for the poor and the suffering. He decried the politics of division.
Will Zubeen’s earnest aspirations be allowed to bloom in the Assam of today?
It is a fatal human flaw that no matter how deeply we love someone, memories of them fade with time. One hopes that this will not be the case with Zubeen Garg.
The writer is editor of Shillong Times
