Zubeen Garg represented not perfection, but possibility
The singer was trapped between his identity as an artiste and the demands of a media economy that thrives on performance rather than creativity.
Updated At : 07:24 AM Oct 13, 2025 IST
Fantasy: His life exemplifies how cultural icons emerge when institutions falter. ANI
THE death of Zubeen Garg marks more than the end of a prodigious career. It reveals the deep anxieties and contradictions of a society caught between cultural intimacy and capitalist consumption. Few figures in recent Indian popular culture have embodied this tension so completely as the iconic Zubeen has. To understand Zubeen Garg is to understand the social imagination of contemporary Assam, its longing for rootedness, its unease with modernity and search for continuity after the voice of Dr Bhupen Hazarika fell silent.
