View source for E Ramachandra Panicker

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[http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=Panicker-single-window-to-north-for-south-Indians-29072015007013 ''The Times of India''], Jul 29 2015
[[File: E Ramachandra Panicker.jpg|E Ramachandra Panicker; Graphic courtesy: [http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=Panicker-single-window-to-north-for-south-Indians-29072015007013 ''The Times of India''], Jul 29 2015|frame|500px]]

Malini Nair

For the jittery south Indian traveller in Delhi of the 1970s, Panicker's Travels in Karol Bagh was a safe haven. Here, in the middle of a wild city whose language and people made him nervous, he could find trustworthy folks who spoke a familiar tongue and could be trusted not to take him on a wild ride. You were put into a bus with the legend “Panicker's Travel's“ emblazoned on the side with a guide who spoke Malayalam or Tamil, fed homely southern stuff, taken to Agra-VrindavanMathura and brought back home safely .
ERC Panicker, the man who introduced three generations of south Indians to the joys of vacationing in north India, passed away in Kerala at the age of 86.He set up arguably India's first successful domestic package tour company--the other perhaps Kundu Special of West Bengal--that also offered travellers the comfort of cultural affinity , long before operators started taking Gujaratis to Europe with maharajs in tow.

Over four decades, he led the once travel-wary south Indian from Agra to Haridwar to Char Dham to Shimla and further afield.

Author Omchery N N Pillai traces Panicker's success to his foresight: “He was an enterprising man who built a reputation entirely on credibility. Back in the 60s, Delhi needed a conducted travel service for travellers, pilgrims and visitors from the south and he stepped into that space. He also had a great social network especially among the city's Malayalis and every family that had a visitor from back home would use him.“

Panicker arrived in Delhi looking for a job in a different age--when tongas ran around the city and the Indian Coffee House at 66, Janpath, was a buzzing intellectual adda. In his biography , “Delhiyude Panicker“ (Delhi's Panicker), cartoonist and writer Sudheernath recounts how it all began. Panicker was given the job of cooking for the staff at the ca é. One day , a railway clerk who visited the coffee house was narrating the travails of getting a ticket on the only Delhi-Agra train. There were ravellers from Kerala, he said, who took the three-day GT Express to Delhi but couldn't get to Agra.

The conversation gave Panicker an idea. He pasted a notice in Malayalam at the coffee house asking tourists rom Kerala who wanted to do a bus trip to Agra to contact him--the number was of a public phone just next to the coffee house.

He hired a 50-seater bus, and found that at Rs 15 a head there was a long queue of takers for the trip. He himself played the guide.

This was 1968 and the tour became such a hit that every Friday Panicker would run a bus from his “office“ at the Indian Coffee House to Agra.Soon the buses had to be operated daily to deal with the rush. Panicker had become a successful businessman.

In the biography , journalist TVR Shenoy talks about what his triumph meant in Delhi of the 1960s: “There were not that many south Indians in the city and we were all collectively called `Madrasis'. The few who knew something about Kerala stereotyped the men as stenos and women as nurses. Panicker challenged that thinking by setting up a successful business.“

In 1975, during Emergency, when the coffee house came crashing down during a bulldozing drive, Panicker had to shift to Scindia House, an “office“ under the stairs which could take exactly one chair and table. The Asian Games brought more travellers from the south and Panicker moved into the big league.

The average Indian traveller today is no longer the risk-averse creature who was Panicker's core customer in the 1970s. But even today , the small town, conservative southern traveller (the `Panick-ed traveller as the joke goes) would much rather home in on the familiar comfort of a Panicker tour package.