Fred, great to see you back on thread! Now don't go away again, will you?
Danny, your vivid exposition upon the communal conveniences of the Sub-Continent and elsewhere inexorably brings to mind the programme on TV by Lucinda Lambton which she entitled, if I have it right, "On the Throne". Yours though would seem to have had a more traditionally rural nature than the glass walled aquarium cisterns in the Victorian Gentlemen's Water Closets of her treatise. I too have witnessed the communal arrangements in US Military Establishments and passed quickly by, like you.
I have zoomed in on Kannur as advised by FED, but on Google Maps rather than Earth, and I think I can see his rectangular strip running approx 340, which has a helicopter "H" emblazoned on it beguilingly labelled "Helipad at Kannur Cantonment". It's just crying out to be the remains of your runway, but clearly cannot be, given your clear description of 240 deg, 'twixt cliffs and road. That I think must be to the south. There one finds a sort of Padang (or Maidan if you will) running in your required direction, that is now the Army sports ground. If that is where your runway was, and the road running from Fort to City is the same as in your day, then you had less of a runway and more of a launching pad, that a STOL Harrier might have flinched at! Fun and games indeed, no wonder you became such a local spectator sport. I wonder if any of the original cantonment buildings still exist?