The KSRTC Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus stand of Calicut fills me with both agony and ecstasy considering the various hits and misses of Buses while travelling out of Calicut. This bus station is a small L shaped structure that can handle some six columns of buses with congestion. A announcer constantly announces on the microphone the buses parked at the bus stand and those about to leave. KSRTC buses are a genre by themselves and a marvel of Maintenance ; most of them being old buses but refurbished from time to time and made highly road worthy.
By the way the best bus station I bear evidence of surprisingly is Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. This bus stop is spacious and elegant in design with a well maintained dorm in the first floor and I have found the general behavior of the staff of APSRTC more courteous and considerate.
I mentioned "hits and misses" above..this means that I narrowly missed boarding some buses in a hurry by a whisker and rarely on being at the bus stand got a bus inadvertently. Calicut city of our times in the mid 1980's had two bus stands..the KSRTC bus stand and a private bus stand at Palayam junction. A new bus stand at the end of Mavoor Road came up in 1987 and was designed by Dr. Vincent Paul of the Civil Engineering Department of REC they say.
My earliest brush with this bus stand and its affairs was in 1983 when somewhere out of the blue Giri my room mate and myself planned to visit Bangalore and reached the bus stand planning to take the 10:00PM bus which is also called the Paper bus meaning that this is the bus that brings Malayalam newspapers to the city of Bangalore and we has also bought coupons for the same but could not board the bus as it was already full. I beseeched the conductor using many ways possible to let us inside but leading to no avail. Both of us could not hide our disappointment. This means waiting until 3:00 Am in the bus stand for a deluxe bus that comes from Ernakulam and bound for Bangalore via Calicut. I cannot forget this sordid experience hanging around in a bus stand just walking up and down trying to while away five hours. At around 2:45 I noticed the bus entering the premises and jumped into it at the earliest opportunity and I found there were many contenders for the few seats in the back. Previously having had experience jumping in and out of the BTS buses of Bangalore the experience came handy. I seized seat number 23 and reserved 24 for my friend and both of us felt relieved when the bus finally crawled out of the stand reaching Bangalore at 12:00 PM.
The second ordeal was few years later reaching the bus stand in the night from Ernakulam well after the last bus to REC had vanished. This means waiting up to 4:00 AM from 10:00 PM a full six hours or so at the stone benches of the Calicut bus stand. I find one thing very good at this bus stand and I appreciate it and request that the same trend be maintained...namely the punctuality and rigor for schedules. Some kind of Six Sigma works here unlike some other bus stands of our country. I reach REC Calicut at around 4:45 AM when it was unearthly and quiet . The nights are ruled by Jackals in REC and I found myself encircled by a few jackals one of them howling at me and I howled louder than them and within some seconds found no trace of them. Few months later I missed the 3:00 AM bus I was talking about by a whisker seeing the bus make a quiet exit from my Auto and I could do nothing about.
My senior David from Coimbatore and myself share a common experience waiting in the bus stand for about two hours early in the morning ...I having reached the spot from Bangalore by the 6:00PM Ernakulam bus and he having reached from Coimbatore and both of us walking to our respective hostels from the bus stop of REC.
This is the Kozhikode Calicut bus stand of our times and an important nerve center for students of our college ...REC buses coming at the right end of the stand and the ticket costing Rs 1 :65 to REC and some Rs. 35/- to Bangalore..the green color express bus..the red colored Fast passenger bus..some white colored Deluxe buses..the drivers clad in khaki uniform with their shirts partially unbuttoned occasionally puffing a beedi ..the continuous announcement on the public address system ..the tea and fried banana in the tea store at the corner..some foreigner tourists asking for the route to Mysore or ooty..the inquiry counter constantly grappling with schedules and the bursting sound of a suddenly cranked engine the Calicut Bus stop of KSRTC had them all.
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