Hands folded, Mamata Banerjee stood with a microphone and appealed to a band of youngsters to pay attention to her reasoning.

That was the defining picture on a day Calcutta exploded in unparalleled protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had arrived in the afternoon. “Go Back, Modi” reverberated across the city.

By evening, Mamata had run into point-blank questions from the young protesters why she had let Modi enter Bengal and met him.

It was an unusual moment: the slogans “Go Back, Modi” and “Go Back, Mamata” were rising from the same throats after a chief minister responded to an invite and held talks with the Prime Minister.

Mamata reasoned with the youngsters — who have been protesting relentlessly, like the chief minister, against the new citizenship matrix. She listed the nuances surrounding constitutional responsibilities and protocol that had prevented her from thwarting Modi’s trip and rejecting outright the invite to meet him.

“Arrey bhai, bojho byaparta (Brother, understand the situation)…. He (Modi) came by air, took a chopper to reach the heart of the city, took a hovercraft in the river, all for their programmes,” she said.

Since the enactment of the amended citizenship law, Bengal has been at the forefront of protests against the BJP’s citizenship thrusts. The protests had not been political alone and several social organisations had repeatedly hit the streets denouncing the Modi government. Bengal had witnessed a certain degree of convergence as the demands of Trinamul, the Left and the Congress and the social organisations were alike.

Against this backdrop, some of the sights and sounds on Saturday afternoon and evening stood out. Slogans like “Go back Mamata” and “Di-di, chhi chhi (Shame, shame, Didi)” were heard although Modi was the principal target when the day had begun.

In the evening, Mamata said from a platform of her party’s student wing on Rani Rashmoni Avenue: “They are an elected government at the Centre. We are an elected government here. There are certain constitutional obligations that one cannot blatantly disregard.”

She was giving the justification for meeting Modi twice -– first in Raj Bhavan, where they had a one-to-one meeting and two hours later at Millennium Park from where the Prime Minister inaugurated a light-and-sound show of Howrah Bridge.

As students closed in towards the platform hurling questions at her, the chief minister tried to reason with them politely and then sat there with a stoic demeanour. Through her stay at the platform, she tried to maintain calm.

“This is not Delhi police who are beating students. This is our police. Your movement is our movement,” the chief minister told the protesting students.

“Please understand that our cause and your cause are the same,” added Mamata, who left after spending around one-and-a-half hours on the platform.

By then, the student protesters had started retreating from the platform. They gathered at several places in Esplanade, where they had plans to spend the night.

The students are expected to start their protest afresh on Sunday morning, when Modi is scheduled to visit Netaji Indoor Stadium for a Calcutta Port Trust programme. Mamata is invited to the port trust programme, too. It remains to be seen whether she attends.

The bigger question will be whether her narrative of meeting Modi twice finds takers at a time the Left and the Congress have accused her of having a “setting”.

CPM politburo member Mohammad Salim said Mamata’s decision to stay away from a meeting of the Opposition parties in Delhi -– convened by Congress president Sonia Gandhi -– and instead meeting Modi indicated that she was aligning with the Prime Minister.

From the Rani Rashmoni Avenue dais, Mamata suggested why she was upset with some of the Opposition parties.

“The BJP has many secret friends in Bengal. They pretend something on their faces but go to the governor every day to conspire against me,” Mamata said. The chief minister did not name anyone but some Congress and Left leaders have met the governor of late.

Mamata cited her compulsions and suggested she had tried to send a political message to Modi within the available space.

“Protocol demands that a minister is be sent. Who was sent to receive Modi at the airport? Firhad Hakim… senior minister from the minorities. Their biggest problem is with minorities,” Mamata said.

Several Trinamul sources said they were aware that the non-BJP Opposition would try to embarrass Mamata after Modi’s visit. “But it will have hardly any impact,” said a source close to Mamata.

First, the chief minister will continue with her anti-Modi and anti-CAA campaign “with more vigour”. “Second, the Left and the Congress are not left with any mass base,” added the source.

According to him, the chief minister and her colleagues would reach out to people with the message that there was no harm in meeting Modi as it was the constitutional responsibility of a chief minister of a state that is owed money by the Centre.

Mamata, soon after the Raj Bhavan meeting, had set the stage for this narrative. “I told him about the Rs 28,000 crore that Bengal is yet to receive from the Centre. This includes the Rs 7,000 crore we were supposed to receive for Cyclone Fani in the summer,” she said and headed for her first appearance on the Rani Rashmoni Avenue dais earlier in the afternoon.

Mamata also said that she had taken the opportunity to tell Modi to his face that she was opposed to the CAA-NRC-NPR. That she wanted this message to be communicated loud and clear was apparent when she led a “Chhi chhi, CAA, CAA (Shame, shame, CAA, CAA)” chorus from the dais.

Although the Opposition’s barbs were expected, the protests by the youths took the Trinamul leadership by surprise. “That’s why, on her return from Millennium Park, she spent time there.… The students moved away from the dais soon and it was clear that she had controlled the damage. No one understands the pulse of the people better than her,” a source close to Mamata said.

This hypothesis -– rarely proven wrong since 2009 -– would surely be tested in the days to come.