Used to pacing up and down the dais armed with a microphone, she sat in a wheelchair and with a plastered foot — an extraordinary sight in a state grown familiar to a boundless mix of movement and sound that explodes when Mamata Banerjee takes centre stage.
Shorn of mobility, the voice of the 66-year-old lacked the usual thunder and the speech was over in barely 10 minutes.
But the message from Mamata at the Sunday afternoon event — her first public meeting since her injury in Nandigram on Wednesday — was loud and clear: “Don’t forget an injured tigress is more dangerous than a dead one.”