Badrian Garden Street in Chennai | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Walking (or rather stumbling) about in George Town the other day, I saw the signboard shown alongside Badrian Garden Street. And that set me off on a trip to the past when this name cropped up several times in my research. But the first of these concerned historian S. Muthiah, and not me. It was sometime in the late 1980s when he was informed that an obelisk had been discovered at the intersection of this street and N.S.C. Bose Road. A private house was being demolished, and a 15-foot obelisk had appeared among the ruins. All excited, the chief, as I always referred to him, rushed there only to find the obelisk demolished as well. The owner was unapologetic. He feared that if the government got to know of the existence of the pillar, his property would be taken over. The obelisk was one of six erected in the 1770s, to mark the southern boundary of George Town. Their location is given precisely in a …