Far east of Guwahati, the sun rose casually at 7 Raffles Boulevard, Singapore, as if it was just another day. Far from his cosy Kharguli studios in Guwahati, Zubeen Garg too woke up in his Pan Pacific Hotel for an impending programme that evening, this 19th of September.

Singapore, which blends modernity and green spaces, provided a diverse cultural mix and synced with his emotions. He was up for it when fate decided to pull the strings. The sea in collision with the yacht and the life jacket (or rather the lack of it) decided to savour his music, fully knowing that they will not be able to return him to mother earth. For he was an epileptic and not supposed to lock horns with water. A few moments of stiffness, a bout of vomiting and perhaps he turned blue. Merging with the universal azure on top of him, it took a second to transform music into a nightmare.

Singapore, being close to the equator, often results in consistently warm temperatures and no natural snowfall. A festive simulated snow show avalanche that takes place at Tanglin Mall during Christmas is all they had to create a winter-like experience. Zubeen didn’t have to wait till Christmas. The avalanche of emotions had already begun to take centre stage. And as they drove him from the airport to his Kahilipara residence and then to the Sarusajai stadium, it was evident that floods in Assam are a never-ending affair. If not with water, with tears.

Now when was the last time bursts of emotions of such humongous magnitude happened? When was the last time road stretches transformed into an odyssey of love and reverence agnostic of caste and creed? And when was the last time we saw rivers of such volcanic emotions’ confluence into a sea of bereavements? As they say, the true earnings in life are not a reflection of your passbook but the count of hearts walking with you in your last journey. Only good deeds take you home.

And that brought back memories from 13th October ‘87 to 16th October ‘87 when the entire stretch of bitumen from Mumbai to Khandwa got melted in the waves of emotions en route. As in Guwahati, the whole of Khandwa was there in the streets. Almost every home had lit candles to sweep the darkness, and no shop fell behind each other in downing shutters. Several families would perform the shraddha following all rituals, while many avoided non-vegetarian food for thirteen days.

And then I suddenly realised, Kishore Kumar and Zubeen Garg had so much in common that one would consider our generation blessed to have seen, heard and witnessed the exploits of these two iconoclasts in one........

© News18