I have been grieving since September 19, 2025.The whole of Assam has been grieving with me to the untimely passing away of our last rebel child Zubeen Garg. It is hard to put into words how much this name and this person means to every Assamese living in the world. Zubeen da (as we all call him) was more than a singer, he was the pulse of Assam, he was the soundtrack of our childhoods in a state that was torn by armed rebellion against the Indian state.He was rain in tin roofs in Assamese monsoon, someone who’s voice resonates the flow of the river Brahmaputra,A state ravaged by violence in the 80’s and 90’s following the Assam Agitation, demand for Assamese sovereignty from post-colonial India and state sponsored violence that killed hundreds, if not thousands of people all over the state. It was Zubeen’s album called Anamika, that accompanied the sorrow, grief, love and loss of Assam.His songs echoed across Assam’s valleys, rice fields and tea plantations, giving us all many reasons to fall in love with our land, our paddy fields, our community and our culture, despite the despair. If Cuba had Fidel Castro, we had Zubeen Garg. His larger than life personality encapsulated rebellion against oppression and exploitation of common people.There are countless videos of him helping vegetable sellers or rickshaw pullers, sitting down on the road with labourers and sharing meals with them, or helping them financially. He was a people’s hero. He strung the hearts of all Assamese, bringing all of us together as a community without any class, caste, religion or other social divisions.He spoke his mind, never mincing words to call a spade a spade. In his own words:Mur Kunu Jati Nai (I have no caste)Mur Kunu Dhormo Nai (I have no religion)Mur Kunu Bhogwan Nai ( I have no God)Moi Mukt (I am free)When the news of his passing away landed on my WhatsApp group on September 19, I was strolling in Regent’s Park, London. My initial reaction was shock and denial. I remember sitting down on one of the benches to read what happened. I immediately had to speak to my mother who loves Zubeen da. She broke down on the call and I was trying to calm her down by saying maybe it was his destiny that called him to Singapore to embrace his death. I carried on the day without thinking much.Later in the evening when I returned to my flat, I asked Alexa to play my Assamese playlist. When it played one of my favourite songs of Zubeen da, i.e Samoyu Jen Atori Roi, something inside me triggered and then came the incessant tears and pain. Since then, I have been crying inconsolably. This slow simmering grief comes to me in waves, in waves of nostalgia of living my childhood and adulthood in his lyrical company.I realised and felt deeply how intimately I am connected to him. He didn’t even know I existed. My closest encounter with him was in 2003. It was my first Bihu concert held in Judge’s field Guwahati. Dad took my elder sister and myself to watch the show. I was mesmerised as a child to watch this long haired, hipster donned in a black leather jacket walk out with a microphone in his hand singing Mayabini. I was enchanted by him. And ever since then I have been in love with Zubeen da.I carried his songs, his lyrical compositions wherever I went. When I was working across Assam on flood relief, his songs gave us company in the evenings, when we would sit down with the community to share a meal, we sang and danced to his Bihus to give us hope and joy when everything around us was submerged in water. Years later, when I moved to Sikkim and then to Delhi, I found my home in his songs.I used to say that I want someone to love me like Zubeen da’s songs; gentle, tender and who would become my quiet shelter in the storms I cannot control. English language and words cannot do justice to how Zubeen da described love and how to love someone. His songs engrained in my psyche that to love someone is to let your roots entwine without losing your soil, to be gentle in their breaking and joyful in their rising.When I moved to London for my PhD, besides finding my home in Zubeen da’s songs, I found my Assameseness is defined and laid out bare in his lyrics. Encountering existential questions on who is an Assamese and what makes me an Assamese in my doctoral project on borders in Assam, my quest took me back to his songs. His songs stayed with me on nights when I lost my patience in writing through trauma and pain of seeing Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Assam in 2019.Years later, I realised I am so intimately connected to Zubeen da through his songs. For me Assam is Zubeen da. I fantasise the smell of rain through his songs, the echoes of Bihu through his songs, the burning desires of love through his songs, the radical activism to hold onto Assameseness through his songs. I am also reminded that I am more Assamese than I think I am.Crying alone in a train station in Lancaster, UK, on 22nd Sept, sat on a bench, when two staff approached me, I was finding it difficult to tell them why I am crying inconsolably at the death of a singer. I could not tell them in my own native tongue Assamese, that there are thousands of us living in all parts of the world, crying inconsolably right now.Zubeen da’s passing away is a personal loss for so many of us. It is as if he is a family member. Continents apart, being far away from my people and community, I carry this immense pain and grief. I don’t’ know how to navigate a world without Zubeen da. And I know many of us echo the same feeling.The author is a feminist academic and activist from South Asia with over a decade of experience working across the development sector and academia in South Asia, parts of Africa, and the UK. She has a PhD in Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London and works as the Decolonising Research Fellow at London South Bank University (LSBU), where she leads the university’s institutional commitment to decolonising curriculum, research, and practice.