This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork in West Bengal conducted by the author in 2009 and 2010 and discourse analysis of news reportage at this time, to show the circulation of the ‘left crisis’ in the public spheres of Kolkata. The author argues that anxieties and uncertainties of this time of political instability refracts through historical sediment of socialist rule of the past three decades. She draws out a historical sketch of the present moment of anxiety and abyss in West Bengal, that bears resonance with earlier makings of the post-colonial protesting citizen, who comes to locate his political presence in the vocabulary of ‘the left’. Protibaad, or protest, the author argues, circulates and restores familiarity at a time of anxiety, ambiguity and change.