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L N MALLICK
Doha
ONCE a very popular tradition of sending Eid greetings to near and dear ones, Eid greetings cards have become a thing of the past today with the advent of the latest modes of e-communication.
As the greeting card hardly makes to the list of Eid shoppers today, its availability in Doha has also declined. Many shops which dealt in it in Msheireb area earlier, relocated to other areas or scrapped businesses after the demolition of the old buildings due to the cards' waning popularity.
The tradition of sending Eid cards is very old and Muslims used this means to express their sentiments to their relatives on the occasion. Come Eid and shopkeepers and libraries dealing in Eid cards in Qatar would make special arrangements and import cards from different countries.
But, things have changed. People visit markets to buy anything related to Eid, but greeting cards hardly make it to their list of shopping. Colourful cards with diverse messages of greetings are left only to decorate the racks in the shops.
Nasir Mehmood, an Indian expatriate shopping at a major mall said:"The most important factor responsible for the decline of demand of Eid cards is the advancement of technology as now people prefer to send greetings through text messages, emails and social networking websites instead of sending cards."
According to people, sending Eid cards is an expensive and time-consuming affair while sending messages electronically is easy, fast and cheap."Greeting people through a card can be quite cumbersome and time consuming. One must visit the market, purchase the card, write a message and then post it, which is quite a long process compared to clicking the send button on one's mobile phone," said Noor Alam, a Bangladeshi expatriate.
"Internet, Short Message Service (SMS) and other means of communication have become very popular to exchange greetings these days as these are less expensive and more convenient and a growing number of people use these facilities,"remarked Ahmad Pasha, a Pakistani expatriate.
