An 85-year-old man in eastern Assam’s Sivasagar was unaware of what hit the northeastern State on September 19, soon after the news that singer-composer Zubeen Garg died by drowning in Singapore. Two days later, as fans surrounded Garg’s mortal remains in a glass coffin placed almost at the centre of Guwahati’s Arjun Bhogeswar Baruah Sports Complex, the octogenarian struggled to recognise the superstar’s face from the close-up on the television screen.It took Mohan Madhab Baruah a long time to make his father, battling amnesia, realise the loss – for him and most others in Assam. His memory jogged, albeit temporarily, Bhogeswar Baruah’s eyes turned moist, and he wished he could run to see one of his favourite nephews for the last time at a sports complex named after him, about 360 kilometres west of his Sivasagar home.“Zubeen addressed my father as Borta (uncle, elder to one’s father) and the two respected each other’s craft and accomplishments. My father, who valued fitness, would advise him to be disciplined and take care of his health,” the junior Baruah said.The first Assamese to win a gold medal at an international event, Bhogeswar Baruah is a living legend in Assam. More than three decades after he won the 800-metre race at the 1966 Asian Games, he came across a young singer-composer, who went on to have a cult following for his romantic, rebellious, melancholic, devotional, and festive songs that struck a chord with people across age groups.If Garg was like a nephew or son to Assam’s ‘Generation B’, he was the dada or elder brother to ‘Generation Z’, who took to the streets in sorrow and anger after his body reached Guwahati from Singapore via New Delhi on September 21.The ‘B’ stands for Bhupen Hazarika, Assam’s only other cultural icon whose death on November 5, 2011, triggered a mass mourning, and the ‘Z’ is for Zubeen. But while the admirers of the former, battling ill-health in a Mumbai hospital for five months, expected the inevitable, the latter’s passing at 52 shocked his fans, largely because of the circumstances that led to his death in Singapore.