KARACHI: “I used to collect tasbeeh,” says the elderly Sultana Begum. “Almost everyone I knew was aware of my hobby. And they brought me the most beautiful tasbeeh from their travels to Muslim countries. There were the ones made from glass, crystal, stone, wooden beads and pearls. There were perfumed, engraved, and of different lengths with 33, 99 or 500 beads,” she adds about her huge tasbeeh or misbaha collection.

“I loved receiving these gifts from my family and friends. I prayed for them. I would carry out the Takbir, Tahmid and Tasbeeh along with various other wazifa and zikr on my tasbeeh,” she says.

“Then one day I was given a metallic object with a small lever like thing on one side by my son. He said it was a counter, which is also used as a tasbeeh. It could fit in my hand and when I pressed the lever the counter, the number behind a tiny window, moved up. Though it was convenient, it was not beautiful like my prayer beads,” she says.

“Today, I get so many plastic digital counters that I think people have forgotten the charm of the tasbeeh beads hanging from the wrist as the fingers move the beads to keep count. The digital counters are battery-run and you can wear them on a finger like a ring and they are mostly made in China in the gaudiest of colours,” she says.

For now the poor grandmother has no clue that things have moved much forward from even the little digital number counting tool as today one can even download tasbeeh apps for smartphones. On Google Play, too, there are apps such as the Tasbeeh, the Real Tasbeeh Counter, the Digital Tasbeeh Counter, the Ramazan Tasbeeh Counter Zikir, Dhikr Stones, Tasbih with Actual Experience, etc. And it is all freeware.

Still, the manual tasbeeh has not vanished. It is still very much there, being sold in shops and outside mosques. But you ask them where they are made now and the answer is almost always “in China”.

“Of course, we know that they are a part of tradition and very beautiful too. But the younger generation is more practical so we prefer the counters and apps. There is nothing wrong with this,” says Ahmed Najib, a young man wearing a bright green digital counter on his thumb in a park where he has come for a walk with his better half.

As for the tasbeeh apps, they have options of size on your phone screens, changeable themes, vibration features and click sounds, night mode with LED buttons and storage of record even after exiting. The Tasbih with Actual Experience app shows Quranic verses and the beaded tasbeeh on the screen very clearly.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2018