KARACHI: When you click on it, ‘Eid’ changes to ‘Mubarak’ and vice versa. Another interactive card on a free e-cards website has a dove fluttering around the minarets of a beautiful mosque holding a white envelope in its beak. Inside the envelope there’s an Eid card, of course.

Still, some people aren’t impressed. They are the ones you find at the bookstalls and greeting card shops, pulling out one card or another from a rack, carefully reading the inscriptions inside and deciding which ones to buy and for whom.

“E-cards may be free and a lot less trouble but you tell me what’s the charm in selecting something on the net and emailing it to your loved ones? Where’s the effort in there? And with it the appreciation also dies,” said M.F. Alvi, a gentleman carefully selecting Eid cards at Pakistan Chowk on Monday.

At another shop, Mohammad Sajid Sultan was trying to make up his mind about which of the red cards with silver and gold glitter and little hearts was he going to buy for his wife.

“Buying Eid cards is a tradition, one that I do not wish to miss. Whatever is written in these cards seems to be amplified when in the form of something that you can actually hold and feel. E-cards, you can just delete and forget about. These cards you save. My wife will cherish my gesture and never throw away this card, I know,” he said.

Salman Hameed, a shopkeeper, said that Eid cards still sold like hot cakes around this time of year.

“Wishing someone on Eid is a tradition and doing it with a carefully selected Eid card will never go out of fashion,” he said.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2014