I have attempted to translate Zubeen Garg's poem "Bhitore Bahire" from Assamese into English. In this deeply personal work, Garg draws a contemplative comparison between the sea and the river, ultimately expressing his preference for the latter. The poem takes on profound significance when viewed through the lens of his tragic passing. He died in the very waters he seemed to regard with ambivalence, while his final wish was for his ashes to be scattered in the Brahmaputra, the river that held his deeper affection.

 

This juxtaposition between his poetic preference for rivers over seas, and the cruel irony of his death in sea waters, renders the poem almost prophetic. It speaks to a man who understood the difference between the vastness that overwhelms and the flow that nurtures, between the infinite that isolates and the eternal that embraces. In "Bhitore Bahire", Garg seems to have articulated not just an aesthetic choice, but a spiritual longing, one that would ultimately guide even his final journey 'home'.