Mansooruddin Faridi / New Delhi

The Eid cards that were once sent to friends and family much in advance of the festival have become a thing of the past in this digital era.

With this the world of emotions and personalized greeting and perhaps the bonds of love too have broken. Welcome to the world of digital communication where artificial intelligence is trying to replace the real emotions of humans.

Everyone has a mobile phone in hand, a computer on the desk and a laptop in the lap. There is a smart TV on the wall. With the remote in hand, humans have descended into a make-believe world and the modern generation can never understand the emotions and love that poured into and out of these cards.

In this new world, the culture of e-cards has come into vogue.

This trend is in keeping up with the vanishing of handwritten letters as the basic long-distance communication between two humans. The letters would be preserved for years and so would be the greeting card on Eid and other festivals.

The eid card had emerged as a fashion in the last years of the nineteenth century in the Indian subcontinent. By the way, many wealthy Muslim families have a long tradition of Eid cards with personalised calligraphy.

Until the end of the last century, the tradition of Eid cards continued with the advent of mobile and the internet. Eid card fans say, "Apparently technology has made it less expensive, easier and more attractive for people to express their feelings. But in a few clicks, they can never be as enjoyable as before. "

Till the advent of cheap mobile phones and easy access to the internet, when the buying and selling of Eid cards would begin n the markets with the arrival of  Ramazan.

Each card will have a message and the buyer would spend hours choosing the right kind of car for different people in his life. The cards would be printed with specific message to a brother, sisters, sisters-in-law, wife, friends and acquaintances.

Some had flowers and some had beautiful faces. As young students short on money, the youngsters would flock to markets looking for sale stalls where the cards would be sold at discounted prices.

On the receiver’s end, people would be excited to open the greeting card. It would be read and re-read as if the reader was soaking himself in the love of the person who has sent it. Greeting thus was no longer just clicking a button but an act of thinking about a person, selecting a card for him, choosing the right words for him and then posting the card well in time that it reaches its designation before the day.

People would show off the cards to friends and preserve the same for years.

Of course the greeting card would become a burden on the postal department and especially the postman who travelled on foot or bicycle to deliver the cards.

The postman delivered each and every card with a smiling face.

The slip side of the greeting card industry was the environmental destruction as the making of cards would involve cutting of trees in a large number