A Feeling that's called Zubeen

হয়টো ব্ৰহ্মপুত্ৰ হোৱা হ’লে উভতাই পঠিয়াই দিলেহেঁতেন....কিন্ত বিদেশৰ সাগৰখনে ৰাখি থ'লে....

There are some voices that don’t just pass through the ears, they settle inside the heart and quietly shape the rhythm of a generation. For many of us, the Gen X, who grew up in Assam, Zubeen was never only a singer; he was a season, a mood, almost a childhood friend who stayed close through the radio static, the cassette rewinds, and the loudspeakers that blared when the night supers stopped at Jakhalabandha for tepid dinners.

I remember Mahalaya mornings and Durga Puja evenings when the pandals in every nook and corner of my town would come alive not just with the fragrance of dhoop-dhuna, but also with Zubeen Garg’s voice spilling from loudspeakers. The boys decorating the pandal with bamboo and thermocol would pause their work just to hum along, and the girls in their mekhela sador would giggle when the song would hit its high note. For us children, his songs stitched festivals to memory. No bohag bihu, no wedding, no uruka, no picnic and no reunion was ever complete without him in the background. Even before we understood love or heartbreak, we knew his songs carried something deeper than words. His were the kind of songs you sang without knowing why, as if they already knew the secret of your heart before you did.

Zubeen echoed in the quieter moments too. He drenched the rainy evenings when the Brahmaputra swelled up with secrets. When Bluetooth, Spotify and Gaana.com were yet to be conceived, inside warm Assam-type houses, people played his cassettes on tape recorders, letting his voice fill the gaps that loneliness sometimes left behind. For our parents, his songs brought comfort; for us, they were love, rebellion, solace and discovery; for grandparents, they were proof that Assamese music still had soul and class.

He was not only about the hits, the hysteria,  the dynamics,  the madness; it was also about the feeling he created and a reminder that our local dialects, our stories, our laughter and pain, all deserved to be sung with pride. His music was both intimate and communal. You listened alone, and you also danced together. Zubeen was the friend you never met but always knew, the lover you never kissed, the story you never quite finished reading. He was the Local Dada who dared,  and cared.

When I hear his songs, it is not just music I return to. His voice carries the scent of wet earth after the first rain. The glow of fairy lights on puja nights. The echo of husori beats on the twilights of spring. The sound of elders laughing late into the evening. And always, always, that voice which soars, breaks, loves, cries, heals.

Zubeen was belonging,  and it was the heartbeat of Assam carried in melody. Our childhood, our youth and our lives have lost a lot of charm with his demise. Because for us, home sounded like his voice...