Madurai has long been a textile center and the streets around the temple still teem with cloth stalls and tailors' shops. A great place to buy locally manufactured cottons as well as the batiks loved by many travelers is Puthu Mandapam, an old, stone-pillared hall just along from the eastern entrance to Sri Meenakshi Temple. Here you'll find lines of textile stalls opposite rows of tailors, each busily treading away and capable of whipping up a good replica of whatever you're wearing in an hour or two.